Today in History - December 12
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1098 Dec 12, The 1st Crusaders captured and plundered Mara, Syria.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1474 Dec 12, Isabella crowned herself queen of Castilia & Aragon.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1531 Dec 12, Legend held that a dark-skinned Virgin Mary appeared to a peasant outside Mexico City and left an imprint on his cactus-fiber poncho. The poncho became an icon for the Virgin of Guadalupe. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, an Indian peasant, had visions of the Virgin Mary. In 2002 Pope John Paul II planned to canonize him. The Vatican’s main source was a religious work that dated to 1666.
(SFC, 2/1/99, p.A9)(WSJ, 2/27/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/17/02, p.A1)(AP, 7/30/02)
1600 Dec 12, John Craig, Scottish church reformer and James VI's court vicar, died.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1685 Dec 12, Lodovico Giustini, composer, was born.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1745 Dec 12, John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was born. He became a diplomat and governor of NY, served as the first Supreme Court Head Justice, and negotiated treaties for the United States
(HN, 12/12/98)(MC, 12/12/01)
1753 Dec 12, George Washington, the adjutant of Virginia, delivered an ultimatum to the French forces at Fort Le Boeuf, south of Lake Erie, reiterating Britain’s claim to the entire Ohio river valley. Washington (22) was sent by Gov. Robert Dinwiddie to warn the French soldiers that they were trespassing on English territory.
(HN, 12/12/98)(WSJ, 2/10/00, p.A16)
1770 Dec 12, The British soldiers responsible for the “Boston Massacre" were acquitted on murder charges.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1777 Dec 12, Rev. Benjamin Russen was hanged at Tyburn, England, for rape.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1787 Dec 12, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1792 Dec 12, In Vienna Ludwig Van Beethoven (22) received 1st lesson in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1799 Dec 12, Two days before his death, George Washington composed his last letter, to Alexander Hamilton, his aide-de-camp during the Revolution and later his Secretary of the Treasury. In the letter he urged Hamilton to work for the establishment of a nationally military academy. Washington wrote that letter at the end of a long, cold day of snow, sleet and rain that he had spent out-of-doors. He remained outside for more than five hours, according to his secretary Tobias Lear, did not change out of his wet clothes or dry his hair when he returned home.
(HNQ, 10/25/02)
1800 Dec 12, Washington DC was established as the capital of US.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1805 Dec 12, Henry Wells, founder of American Express and Wells Fargo, was born.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1821 Dec 12, Gustave Flaubert (d.1880), French novelist, was born. "Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times." [see May 8, 1880]
(V.D.-H.K.p.278)(AP, 6/19/99)(HN, 12/12/99)
1822 Dec 12, Mexico was officially recognized as an independent nation by US.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1833 Dec 12, Matthias Hohner (d.1902), German manufacturer (harmonica), was born.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1849 Dec 12, Marc Brunel (b.1769), the initiating engineer of England’s Thames Tunnel, died.
(ON, 4/06, p.9)(www.bris.ac.uk/is/services/specialcollections/brunelchronology.html)
1855 Dec 12, Jean de Charpentier (b.1786), a German-Swiss geologist, died in Bex, Switzerland.
(ON, 10/08, p.12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_Charpentier)
1862 Dec 12, The Union lost its first ship to a torpedo, the USS Cairo, in the Yazoo River.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1863 Dec 12, Edvard Munch (d.1944), Norwegian artist (The Scream), was born.
(WUD, 1994 p.941)(NH, 6/00, p.20)(HN, 12/12/00)
1863 Dec 12, Orders were given in Richmond that no more supplies from the Union should be received by Federal prisoners.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1868 Dec 12, In Indiana 56 hooded men entered New Albany jail. Frank Reno was the first to be dragged from his cell to be lynched. He was followed by his two brothers, William and Simeon. Another gang member, Charlie Anderson, was also hanged in the prison. [see May 22]
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWvigilantes.htm)
1870 Dec 12, Joseph H. Rainey became the first black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives. Rainey, a Republican from South Carolina, filled the seat made vacant by the expulsion of Representative Benjamin F. Whittemore. Rainey served for 10 years.
(AP, 12/12/97)(MC, 12/12/01)
1875 Dec 12, Karl R.G. von Rundstedt, German general, field marshal (Normandy), was born.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1886 Dec 12, Edward Richard Woodham (b.1831), English survivor of the Charge of the Light Brigade (1854), died.
(AP, 9/29/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Richard_Woodham)
1889 Dec 12, Robert Browning (77), English poet (Ring & Book), died.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1893 Dec 12, Edward G. Robinson, actor famous for gangster roles, was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1897 Dec 12, Lillian Smith, Southern writer and civil rights activist, was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1897 Dec 12, "The Katzenjammer Kids," the pioneering comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks, made its debut in the New York Journal.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1899 Dec 12, George F. Bryant of Boston patented the wooden golf tee.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1901 Dec 12, Italian scientist and engineer Guglielmo Marconi received the first long-distance radio transmission in St. John's, Newfoundland, 2,232 miles. Electrical engineer John Ambrose Fleming transmitted the Morse code signal for "s" from across the Atlantic Ocean in England and Marconi heard it--three short clicks--through a radio speaker. Marconi had begun experimenting with radiotelegraphy around 1895, and he realized that messages could be transmitted over much greater distances by using grounded antennae on the radio transmitter and receiver. A few years after the successful transmission with Fleming, Marconi opened the first commercial wireless telegraph service.
(HNPD, 12/12/98)(MC, 12/12/01)
1906 Dec 12, US Pres. Theodore Roosevelt nominated Oscar Straus to be secretary of commerce and labor; Straus became the first Jewish Cabinet member.
(AP, 12/12/07)
1908 Dec 12, Luis Peraza (d.1974), Venezuelan dramatist, was born.
(www.dramateatro.arts.ve/ensayos/n_0011/milagros_santana_11.html)
1909 Dec 12, Mildred Linton (d.2003) was born in Ottumwa, Iowa. She became a film star in the 1930s under the name Karen Morley.
(SFC, 4/21/03, p.B5)
1911 Dec 12, In northern India Britain’s King George V stood before some 562 princes as well as maharajahs, soldiers and bureaucrats, and made a surprise announcement that would change the fate of Delhi, an ancient fading city with a population of 410,000. The king said Delhi would be the new capital of India.
(AP, 12/11/11)(Econ, 12/17/11, p.68)
1912 Dec 12, Henry Armstrong, American boxer, was born.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1913 Dec 12, Ethiopia’s Emperor Menelik II (b.1844) died. After his death the council of regency continued the rule of Ethiopia. Lij Iyasu had been designated successor of Menelik II by Empress Taytu in May 1909 - however a problem occurred: the imperial Abyssinian rules of succession dictated, that only a Christian could rule Ethiopia as Emperor - and Lij Iyasu had taken the Muslim faith. Therefore Lij Iyasu was never crowned emperor of Ethiopia. In 1916 Empress Zewditu I of Ethiopia succeeded Menelik II, she was his oldest daughter.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menelik_II_of_Ethiopia)
1913 Dec 12 , Authorities in Florence, Italy, announced that the Mona Lisa, stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1911, had been recovered.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1915 Dec 12, Frank Sinatra, actor and singer, was born in Hoboken New Jersey. He died May 14, 1998. In 1986 Kitty Kelly wrote his biography “His Way."
(WSJ, 12/14/95, p.A-12)(SFC, 11/11/96, p.D1)(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C10)(SFC, 5/16/98, p.E7)
1916 Dec 12, Worst train disaster ever took place in Modane, France, 543 French Soldiers were killed.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1917 Dec 12, Father Edward J. Flanagan (31) founded Boys Town outside Omaha, Neb. A half-dozen boys entered to seek a better life. [see Dec 1]
(AP, 12/12/97)(MC, 12/12/01)
1917 Dec 12, In Modane, France, a troop train derailed near the entrance of Mt. Cenis tunnel and 543 people were killed.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)(AP, 2/18/04)
1922 Dec 12, John Wanamaker (b.1938), US merchant who founded a chain of stores in Philadelphia, died. He introduced department stores and price tags to the US and became the first modern advertiser when he bought ads in newspapers to promote his stores.
(http://tinyurl.com/ck74o)(Econ, 7/8/06, p.61)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.15)
1924 Dec 12, Edward I Koch, Mayor-D-NYC, 1977-89, judge on TV’s People's Court, was born in NYC.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1925 Dec 12, Arthur Heinman opened the first motel, the "Motel Inn," in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1927 Dec 12, Robert Norton Noyce, co-inventor of the integrated circuit, was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1927 Dec 12, Communists forces seized Canton, China.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1928 Dec 12, Helen Frankenthaler, abstract painter, was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1929 Dec 12, John Osbourne, playwright and film producer (Look Back in Anger), was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1930 Dec 12, Revolution began in Spain as rebels took a border town.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1930 Dec 12, Last Allied troops left the Saar of Germany.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1931 Dec 12, Under pressure from the Communists in Canton, Chiang Kai-shek resigned as President of the Nanking Government but remained the head of the Nationalist government that held nominal rule over most of China.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1936 Dec 12, Chang Hsueh-liang (d.2001 at 101), a northern military commander (aka Zhang Xueliang), kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek to force him into an alliance to repel Japanese forces. The Xi’an incident coup ended after 2 weeks. The incident led the Nationalists and the Communists to make peace so that the two could form a united front against the increasing threat posed by Japan. Chang was later court-martialed and sentenced to prison. He was taken to Taiwan in 1949 and kept under house arrest.
(SFC, 10/16/01, p.B2)(Econ, 5/9/09, p.86)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi%27an_Incident)
1936 Dec 12, Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek declared war on Japan.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1937 Dec 12, Japanese aircraft sank the U.S. gunboat Panay on China's Yangtze River, during the battle for Nanking in the Sino-Japanese War. Japan later apologized and paid $2.2 mil-lion dollars in reparations.
(AP, 12/12/97)(MC, 12/12/01)
1939 Dec 12, Douglas Fairbanks (56), actor (Zorro, 3 Musketeers, Robin Hood), died.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1941 Dec 12, German occupying army searched house to house in Paris looking for Jews.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1943 Dec 12, The exiled Czech government signed a treaty with the USSR for postwar cooperation.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1943 Dec 12, The German Army launched Operation Winter Tempest, the relief of the Sixth Army trapped in Stalingrad. The attempt to relieve Stalingrad fell short due to stubborn Soviet resistance and the Germans' indecision within the besieged city.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1946 Dec 12, Tide laundry detergent was introduced.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1946 Dec 12, A United Nations committee voted to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a gift by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to be the site of U.N. headquarters.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1947 Dec 12, The United Mine Workers union withdrew from the American Federation of La-bor.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1948 Dec 12, Charles Templeton Crocker (b.1884), multi-millionaire grandson of the Central Pacific (and Southern Pacific) railroad magnate and banker, Charles Crocker (1822-1888), died. He authored "The Cruise of the Zaca" in 1933.
(http://researcharchive.calacademy.org/research/library/special/findaids/Crocker.html)
1948 Dec 12, British soldiers surrounded the Sungai Rimoh rubber estate in Batang Kali, shot 24 Malaysian rubber plantation workers and set the village on fire. In 1970 Britain’s incoming Conservative administration dropped a police investigation, claiming a lack of evidence. In 2012 relatives of killed workers lost their High Court battle for a full inquiry by the British government.
(AFP, 9/4/12)
1949 Dec 12, Saab, a Swedish aircraft maker, began full-scale production of the Saab 92 automobile based on the prototype Saab 92001.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_92)
1953 Dec 12, Chuck Yeager reached Mach 2.43 in Bell X-1A rocket plane.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1955 Dec 12, 1st prototype of hovercraft patented by British engineer Christopher Cockerell.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1956 Dec 12, In Hungary a general strike protested the Kadar Regime and the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that condemned Soviet repression in Hungary, called on the USSR to withdraw its forces, and urged Hungarian independence.
(EWH, 1968, p.1183)(HN, 12/12/98)
1961 Dec 12, Martin Luther King Jr & 700 demonstrators were arrested in Albany, Ga.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1961 Dec 12, Frantz Fanon (b.1925), Martinique-born writer, psychiatrist, and revolutionary died in Washington, DC. His work foretold of Third World liberation struggles. His book “Wretched of the Earth" (1961) celebrated anti-colonial revolutionaries. In 2008 John Edgar Wideman authored his novel “Fanon" based on Fanon’s life.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/fanon.htm)(SSFC, 10/5/03, p.M2)(WSJ, 2/15/08, p.W2) (Econ, 4/17/10, SR p.16)
1963 Dec 12, Frank Sinatra Jr. returned after being kidnapped.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1963 Dec 12, Kenya gained independence from Britain and the Kenyan African National Union Party (KANU) began ruling. Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, was the first president and served until 1978. The Kikuyu and closely related Meru and Embu groups comprised some 28% of Kenya’s people. Kenya’s population at this time was under 8 million. This was later commemorated as Jamhuri Day. Kenya’s first vice president was Oginga Odinga, the father of Raila Odinga.
(SFC, 10/17/96, A8)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(AP,12/12/97)(SFC,12/23/97, p.D4)(SFC, 8/8/98, p.A12)(Econ, 2/28/09, p.87)(Econ, 3/14/09, p.49)(SSFC, 5/25/14, p.P3)(Econ, 8/12/17, p.35)
1964 Dec 12, Kenya formally became a republic. Its population at this time was about 8 million.
(SFC, 9/4/97, p.A10)(HN, 12/12/98)(Econ, 1/26/13, p.45)
1964 Dec 12, Three Buddhist leaders began a hunger strike to protest the government in Saigon.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1967 Dec 12, The U.S. ended the airlift of 6,500 men in Vietnam.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1968 Dec 12, Tallulah Bankhead (b.1903), American actress, died: "The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner." In 2000 Tovah Feldshuh created "Tallulah Hallelujah," a one-woman show in salute to Bankhead.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallulah_Bankhead)(WSJ, 10/11/00, p.A24)(SSFC, 1/14/01, DB p.34)
1971 Dec 12, David Sarnoff (b.1891), US TV pioneer (RCA), died. He was a Russian immigrant who transformed NBC from a radio to a TV network.
(SFC, 8/2/99, p.B3)(www.davidsarnoff.org/ds07.html)
1975 Dec 12, Sara Jane Moore pleaded guilty to a charge of trying to kill President Ford in San Francisco the previous September.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1975 Dec 12, In South Dakota Anna Mae Pictou Aquash (b.1945) was shot to death. Ameri-can Indian Movement (AIM) members suspected her of being an FBI informant. Her body was found on Feb 24, 1976, on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In 2003 Arlo Looking Cloud (50) was convicted in the murder. John Graham, a Canadian, and Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud, a US citizen, were indicted in 2003 in the United States for Aquash's murder. In 2007 a Canadian court ruled that Graham should be extradited to the United States to face trial. In 2011 Graham was sentenced to serve life in prison.
(www.dickshovel.com/time.html#1976)(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A3)(Reuters, 6/26/07)(SFC, 1/25/11, p.A6)
1975 Dec 12, In New Zealand Robert Muldoon (1921-1992) began serving as prime minister and continued to July 26, 1984. His interventionist policies threatened to send the country to the financial wall.
(WSJ, 10/9/96, p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Muldoon)
1976 Dec 12, QB Joe Namath played his last game as a NY Jet. In 2004 Mark Kriegel authored “Namath: A Biography."
(www.newyorkjets.com/history)(SSFC, 9/26/04, p.M3)
1977 Dec 12, Dr. Grethe Rask (b.1930) from Denmark died of Pneumocystis carinii. She had done research in Africa. Her symptoms had been manifesting in Dec 1976 and she was hospitalized in Africa. In November 1977 after a brief recovery, she decided it was time to go home to die. A colleague saw the wasting, and did an autopsy, where P. carinii was found. She is believed to be one of the first documented cases of probable AIDS infection.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grethe_Rask)
1979 Dec 12, In response to the Iran hostage crisis, the Carter administration ordered the removal of most Iranian diplomats in the United States.
(AP, 12/12/99)
1979 Dec 12, Clara Haili (b.1901), Hawaiian singer (aka Hilo Hattie), hula dancer, actress and comedian, died. She had become famous in the late 1930s for her song “When Hilo Hattie Did the Hula Hop."
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.M4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilo_Hattie)
1979 Dec 12, In South Korea Chun Doo Hwan led a military coup.
(SFC, 12/16/96, p.A16)
1980 Dec 12, The US enacted the Bayh-Dole Act. It allowed recipients of government grants to retain title to their inventions. The act made it easier for universities to commercialize their research and helped create the biotechnology industry. It also amended US copyright law to include computer programs.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh-Dole_Act)(Econ, 12/11/04, p.59)(SFC, 6/21/05, p.D1)
1980 Dec 12, Hambrecht & Quist took Apple Corp. public with 4.6 million shares at $22 per share, which closed at $29 per share.
(www.macworld.com/2006/03/features/30timeline/index.php)(SFC, 1/24/04, p.A12)
1981 Dec 12, "Waiting For A Girl Like You" by Foreigner hit #1 on the pop singles chart and stayed there for 3 weeks.
(www.rockonthenet.com/artists-f/foreigner.htm)
1981 Dec 12-1982 Dec 31, In Poland Gen’l. Jaruzelski imposed martial law, effective at mid-night, restricting civil rights and suspending operation of the independent trade union Solidarity in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement. Polish labor leader Lech Walesa was arrested. Martial law formally ended in 1983. Women kept the organization going as most male leaders were arrested. In 2005 Shana Penn authored “Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland.
(Econ, 7/30/05, p.76)(www.videofact.com/english/martial_law.htm)
1982 Dec 12, The Sentry Armored Car Company in NYC was robbed of $11.4 million from its headquarters. It was the biggest cash theft in US history.
(http://tinyurl.com/36gcc9)
1983 Dec 12, Australia’s labor government under Bob Hawke allowed its dollar to float.
(http://intl.econ.cuhk.edu.hk/exchange_rate_regime/index.php?cid=28)(Econ, 5/28/11, SR p.3)
1983 Dec 12, A truck bomb exploded at the US Embassy in Kuwait. Shiite Muslims backed by Iran drove bomb-laden trucks into six targets. The most deadly of these struck the US Embassy, killing five persons and wounding 62. Other trucks destroyed the French embassy and several Kuwaiti installations (www.danielpipes.org/article/173).
(WSJ, 4/28/05, p.A1)
1985 Dec 12, The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, officially the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, provided for automatic spending cuts to take effect if the president and Congress failed to reach established targets.
(http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/bowsher.html)
1985 Dec 12, 248 American soldiers and eight crew members were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1986 Dec 12, Russian Tupolev-134 crashed in East Berlin and 70 of 82 people were killed.
(www.emergency-management.net/avi_acc_1979_1989.htm)
1987 Dec 12, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, during a visit to Denmark, urged U.S. al-lies to increase spending on conventional forces, following the signing of a superpower inter-mediate-range missile ban treaty.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1987 Dec 12, Clifton Chenier, Zydeco accordionist, died. In 1998 Michael Tisserand published "The Kingdom of Zydeco" and Rick Olivier and Ben Sandmel published the photo documentary "Zydeco!"
(WSJ, 4/19/99, p.A20)(http://experts.about.com/e/c/cl/Clifton_Chenier.htm)
1988 Dec 12, In the Clapham rail disaster 35 people were killed in a triple train collision during morning rush-hour in south London.
(AP, 12/12/98)(Econ, 2/14/04, p.51)
1989 Dec 12, In New York, hotel queen Leona Helmsley was sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion. Helmsley served 18 months behind bars, plus a month at a halfway house and two months of house arrest.
(AP, 12/12/99)
1989 Dec 12, Amid international criticism, Britain forcibly removed 51 Vietnamese from Hong Kong and returned them to their homeland.
(AP, 12/12/99)
1990 Dec 12, President Bush announced that he and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev would hold a summit the following February in Moscow.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1990 Dec 12, Lauro Cavazos resigned as US secretary of education.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1991 Dec 12, Russian President Boris Yeltsin won landslide approval in the Russian legislature for his new commonwealth, while Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev edged closer to resigning, saying, “The main work of my life is done."
(AP, 12/12/01)
1992 Dec 12, President-elect Clinton tapped Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty to be his chief of staff and Democratic national chairman Ron Brown to be commerce secretary.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1992 Dec 12, At least 2,200 people were killed in an earthquake that struck the Flores Island region of Indonesia.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1993 Dec 12, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chief Yasser Arafat failed to re-solve disputes over a plan to start withdrawing Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and Jericho before a deadline.
(AP, 12/12/98)
1993 Dec 12, In Russian parliamentary elections, ultranationalist parties gained strong sup-port, causing concern among foreign governments. Russia adopted a new democratic constitution and began the war with Chechnya. The constitution permitted land sales but no laws to implement sales were enacted until 1997. The preamble began with the words We the multinational people of the Russian Federation.
(SFC, 12/27/96, p.B2)(WSJ, 11/13/97, p.A1)(SFC, 7/7/98, p.B3)(AP, 12/12/98)
1994 Dec 12, IBM stopped shipments of personal computers with Intel's flawed Pentium chip, saying the processor's problems were worse than earlier believed.
(AP, 12/12/99)
1994 Dec 12, The Brazilian Supreme Court acquitted former President Fernando Collor de Mello of the corruption charges that had forced him to resign in 1992.
(AP, 12/12/99)
1995 Dec 12, By only three votes, the US Senate killed a constitutional amendment giving Congress authority to outlaw flag burning and other forms of desecration against Old Glory.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1995 Dec 12, Willie Brown beat incumbent mayor Frank Jordon to become the first African-American mayor of San Francisco. California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown was elected mayor of San Francisco in a victory over Frank Jordan 57 to 43%.
(WSJ, 12/14/95, p.A-1)(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.A16) (HN, 12/12/98)
1995 Dec 12, Two French airmen shot down over Bosnia arrived home after nearly four months as captives of the Bosnian Serbs.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1996 Dec 12, Jonas Mekas, president of the Anthology Film Archives, received a special citation from the New York Film Critics’ Circle for his longtime contributions of independent film.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C8)
1996 Dec 12, Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz resigned as Walt Disney Company's No. 2 executive.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1996 Dec 12, Scientists announced that the Jovian moon, Ganymede, possesses a strong magnetic field due to a molten core. Its outer layer solid ice was said to measure some 500 miles thickness.
(SFC, 12/12/96, p.A2)
1996 Dec 12, In Indonesia Muchtar Pakpahan, leader of the independent labor union, went on trial with members of the leftist political party in connection with the July riots.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.B4)
1996 Dec 12, An accord to abolish tariffs on high tech goods was reached in Singapore at the WTO meeting. The Information Technology Agreement to abolish import duties on high-tech equipment would be in effect from Jul 1, 1997 to Jan 1, 2000.
(WSJ, 12/13/96, p.A1)(SFC, 12/14/96, p.D1)
1996 Dec 12, In Iraq Uday Hussein, eldest son of Sadam, was wounded in a car ambush by assailants with machine guns and grenades. The Mohammed Madhlum Dulaimi Group claimed responsibility.
(WSJ, 12/13/96, p.A1)(SFC, 12/14/96, p.A11)
1997 Dec 12, SFX Entertainment negotiated the purchase of Bill Graham Presents for $65 million.
(SFC, 12/13/97, p.A15)
1997 Dec 12, In Orlando, Fla., John Armstrong was killed by police after a 4-day hostage crises during which he held two children captive. He killed a man just before taking the 2 children hostage. He had been released from prison in March after serving less than a third of a 12-year sentence for robbery in 1989.
(SFEC, 12/14/97, p.A2)
1997 Dec 12, Negotiators in Geneva for the World Trade Organization (WTO) signed an ac-cord to open up the banking and insurance sectors of some 70 member countries to foreign competition.
(SFC, 12/13/97, p.A10)
1997 Dec 12, The IMF announced that it would ask members to boost its capital base by $160 billion. In Sept. a $90 billion increase was approved.
(SFC, 12/13/97, p.A14)
1997 Dec 12, The Cayman Islands told the Norwegian Cruise Line that a chartered 910-passenger ship of gay people would not be allowed to dock.
(SFC, 1/7/98, p.A8)
1997 Dec 12, Japanese train builders (Maglev) claimed world speed record at 332 MPH.
(www.rtri.or.jp/rd/maglev/html/english/maglev_introduction_E.html)
1997 Dec 12, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the international terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal," went on trial in Paris on charges of killing two French investigators and a Lebanese national. He was convicted and began serving a life prison sentence.
(AP, 12/12/98)
1997 Dec 12, In Peru archeologists announced the finding of a 2nd mummy of a young Inca sacrificed over 500 years ago near the summit of Mt. Ampato, not far from Peru’s 2nd city Arequipa.
(SFC, 12/13/97, p.A14)
1997 Dec 12, In South Korea Dongsuh Securities, the country’s 4th largest brokerage firm, went bankrupt. Korea’s stock index fell to its lowest level in 10 years. The central bank said it would pump $6.5 billion in emergency loans into domestic financial institutions to resuscitate the financial system.
(SFC, 12/13/97, p.A10)
1997 Dec 12, In South Korea Pres. candidate Kim Dae Jung set up a teleconference with George Soros, Michael Jackson and Mickey Kantor.
(SFC, 12/16/97, p.A1)
1997 Dec 12, In Switzerland the high court told Swiss banks to send some $500 million in as-sets of the late Ferdinand Marcos back to the Philippines.
(SFC, 12/13/97, p.A14)
1998 Dec 12, The House Judiciary Committee approved a 4th and final article of impeachment against Pres. Clinton as he flew for a three-day visit to the Middle East aimed at rescuing the Wye River peace accords.
(SFEC, 12/13/98, p.A1)(AP, 12/12/99)
1998 Dec 12, In Osseo, Mich., a fireworks explosion at the Independence Professional Fire-works building killed at least 7 people.
(SFEC, 12/13/98, p.A34)
1998 Dec 12, Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles died in Tallahassee at age 68. He had acquired wealth as one of the original investors in Red Lobster restaurants.
(SFEC, 12/13/98, p.C14)
1998 Dec 12, Mo Udall, former state Representative from Arizona, died at age 76. He had served in the House from 1961-1991.
(SFC, 12/14/98, p.A5)(WSJ, 12/14/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 12, In Afghanistan a 5.4 earthquake hit Kabul and killed at least 5 people.
(SFEC, 12/13/98, p.A36)
1998 Dec 12, Marc Hodler (1919-2006), Swiss lawyer and International Olympics Committee official, unleashed a series of corruption allegations that included systemic buying and selling of votes in Olympic bidding, particularly for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
(SFC, 10/21/06, p.B6)
1999 Dec 12, Joseph Heller, author of "Catch-22," died at age 76 in East Hampton, N.Y. His 1998 memoir was titled "Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here." Other novels included "God Knows" (1984) and "Closing Time" (1994). His final work was "Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man." In 2011 Tracy Dougherty authored “Just One Catch: A Biography of Joseph Heller."
(SFC, 12/14/99, p.A10)(WSJ, 6/9/00, p.W9)(SSFC, 8/21/11, p.F1)
1999 Dec 12, The Int'l. Olympic Committee enacted sweeping reforms that included a ban on visits by members to bid cities.
(SFC, 12/13/99, p.A1)
1999 Dec 12, The Erika, a Maltese registered oil tanker, broke in two during a storm off the coast of Brest, France, with 8 million gallons of diesel oil. Half the ship was towed to deeper waters and 3 million gallons were spilled. In 2008 a French court found Total SA guilty of maritime pollution and fined it the maximum penalty of $560,000. It also ordered Total and three other defendants to pay total damages of $285 million.
(SFC, 12/13/99, p.A13)(WSJ, 12/13/99, p.A1)(SFC, 11/20/02, p.A14)(AP, 1/16/08)
1999 Dec 12, In Chile Ricardo Lagos and Joaquin Lavin stood at a virtual tie in presidential elections. A runoff was set for Jan 16.
(SFC, 12/13/99, p.A12)
1999 Dec 12, Sudan's Pres. Omar el-Bashir dissolved parliament, headed by Hassan Turabi, under a 3-month state of emergency. He cited internal and foreign threats. Parliament had been due to enact new constitutional amendments that would have taken away the president’s say in the appointment of provincial governors.
(WSJ, 12/13/99, p.A1)(SFC, 12/14/99, p.A12)(Econ, 6/28/03, p.48)
2000 Dec 12, Pres. Clinton spoke at the northern Irish border town of Dundalk and urged the protection of the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B2)
2000 Dec 12, A divided U.S. Supreme Court reversed a state court decision for recounts in Florida's contested election, effectively transforming George W. Bush into the president-elect. The high court agreed, 7-to-2, to reverse the Florida court's order of a state recount and voted 5-to-4 that there was no acceptable procedure by which a timely new recount could take place. A later review of the ballots suggested that George W. bush would have won anyway.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 11/12/01, p.A1)(AP, 12/12/01)
2000 Dec 12, The Marine Corps grounded all eight of its high-tech V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor air-craft following a fiery crash in North Carolina that killed four Marines.
(AP, 12/12/01)
2000 Dec 12, General Motors, under new CEO Rick Wagoner, announced a restructure and planned phase out of the Oldsmobile vehicle division following a long slide in sales.
(WSJ, 12/12/00, p.A3)(SFC, 12/13/00, p.a3)(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.B2)
2000 Dec 12, Actor George Montgomery (84) died in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
(AP, 12/12/01)
2000 Dec 12, Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a peace pact in Algiers. A 4,200 UN peacekeeping force was set to patrol the border. PM Zenawi and Pres. Afwerki signed the accord, which established a commission to mark the 620-mile border, exchange prisoners, returned displaced people and hear claims for war damages.
(SFC, 12/4/00, p.E2)(WSJ, 12/5/00, p.A1)(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B3)
2000 Dec 12, It was reported that Islamic militants in Indonesia had damaged hundreds of night spots, mostly around greater Jakarta. The Islamic Defender’s Front (FPI) and Front Hizbullah claimed responsibility.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.A18)
2000 Dec 12, Israeli soldiers killed Yousef Abu Swayeh (27), a West Bank Palestinian leader.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B4)
2000 Dec 12, Spanish police arrested Valdimir Gusinsky, a Russian media magnate, on a Russian warrant for misrepresenting assets for loans.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B4)
2001 Dec 12, US federal agents began a crackdown on student visa violations and arrested 10 foreigners in San Diego.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 12, In Los Angeles police arrested Irving David Rubin (56) and Earl Leslie Krugel (59), leaders of the Jewish Defense League, for plotting to blow up a local mosque.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A3)
2001 Dec 12, Ali-al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was arrested in Peoria, Ill. He had reportedly entered the USA legally with his wife and five children on 10 September 2001 to pursue post-graduate studies at Bradley Univ. 18 months later, as he was on the verge of trial for credit card fraud and other charges, Pres. Bush declared him an enemy combatant and moved him into military detention. In 2008 the US Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the president may order that people seized in the US be held indefinitely and without criminal charges.
(www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21383.htm)(WSJ, 12/6/08, p.A1)
2001 Dec 12, Gerardo Hernandez, the leader of a Cuban spy ring, received a life sentence in federal court in Miami for his role in the infiltration of US military bases and the deaths of four Cuban-Americans in 1996.
(AP, 12/12/02)
2001 Dec 12, David Criswell, director of the Univ. of Houston Space Systems Operations, proposed a “Lunar Solar Power System" to collect solar energy on the moon, convert it to microwaves, and beam it to Earth for electrical power.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A5)
2001 Dec 12, A $200 million US Air Force B-1 bomber crashed into the India Ocean near Diego Garcia Island. The 4 crewmen were rescued.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A12)
2001 Dec 12, In Afghanistan al Qaeda fighters at Tora Bora were given a new ultimatum to surrender and turn over their leaders.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 12, Lt. Gen. Abdullah Hendropriyono, the Indonesia intelligence chief, said that a network of al Qaeda training camps were located on Sulawesi Island.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A12)
2001 Dec 12, Palestinian militants detonated bombs beneath an Israeli bus in the West Bank and gunned down passengers as they fled. 10 people were killed. Police killed 1 of 3 militants. Yasser Arafat bowed to long-standing Israeli demands by ordering closed the offices of the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad. 2 Hamas suicide bombers sd’d near an Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip and injured 4 others.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A1,17)(AP, 12/12/02)
2002 Dec 12, Pres. Bush announced a series of regulatory changes to allow religious social-service organizations to receive more government grants and contracts. Bush named Stephen Friedman, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, as his chief economic advisor.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A3)(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A8)
2002 Dec 12, President Bush publicly rebuked Senate Republican leader Trent Lott for his statement that appeared to embrace half-century-old segregationist politics, calling it "offensive" and "wrong."
(AP, 12/12/03)
2002 Dec 12, President Bush named Wall Street investment banker Stephen Friedman to head his National Economic Council, replacing Lawrence Lindsey, who'd been ousted along with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2002 Dec 12, Actor Nick Nolte pleaded no contest in Malibu, Calif., to one count of driving un-der the influence of drugs; he was sentenced to three years' probation.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2002 Dec 12, Dee Brown (94), author of "Bury My heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West" (1970), died in Little Rock, Ark.
(SFC, 12/16/02, p.A23)
2002 Dec 12, Brad Dexter (85), film actor, died. His films included "The Magnificent Seven" and "Run Silent, Run Deep."
(SFC, 12/16/02, p.A23)
2002 Dec 12, In western Algeria a bomb exploded at an outdoor market, killing four people and wounding 16.
(AP, 12/12/02)
2002 Dec 12, Australia's highest court dismissed one of the nation's longest running tribal land claims. The Yorta tribe began the battle in 1994 for a special property right known as native title in 800 square miles of land around the Murray River in eastern Australia. The area is now occupied by farmers.
(AP, 12/12/02)
2002 Dec 12, In Brazil Pres.-elect Lula da Silva nominated Henrique Meirelles, a former executive for FleetBoston, as Central Bank governor.
(WSJ, 12/14/02, p.A12)
2002 Dec 12, Israeli troops near Hebron shot and killed 2 armed Palestinians in separate incidents.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A22)
2002 Dec 12, North Korea said it was immediately activating the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon that was shut down in 1994, due to suspension of fuel deliveries.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 12, Opec agreed to cut oil production by as much as 7%, well ahead of a seasonal decline.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.B1)
2003 Dec 12, Pres. Bush said that Halliburton, VP Dick Cheney's former company, should repay the government if it overcharged for gasoline delivered in Iraq under a prewar contract.
(AP, 12/12/03)(WSJ, 12/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 12, Pres. Bush signed legislation calling for economic penalties against Syria for not doing enough to fight terrorism.
(SFC, 12/13/03, p.A3)
2003 Dec 12, In California Hispanics protested the repeal of a law allowing illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses, taking to the streets in a statewide boycott of schools and businesses.
(AP, 12/12/03)(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 12, It was reported that researchers had found a gene in worms that was responsible for drunkenness.
(WSJ, 12/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 12, Former Azerbaijani Pres. Geidar Aliev (Heydar Aliyev, b.1923), a former KGB general and Communist Party chief who brought stability to a nation plagued by insurgencies, died at the Cleveland Clinic.
(AP, 12/12/03)(SFC, 12/13/03, p.A20)
2003 Dec 12, In London, England, Mick Jagger (b.1943) of the Rolling Stones was knighted.
(SFC, 12/13/03, p.A2)
2003 Dec 12, Paul Martin was sworn in as Canada's 21st prime minister with a vow to make drastic changes in the way the country is run.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2003 Dec 12, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Mexico in a bid to extend a string of re-cent diplomatic and economic successes in North America. In 2002 China shipped $6.3 billion in goods to Mexico, undercutting many local goods.
(SFC, 12/4/03, p.A22)(AP, 12/12/03)
2003 Dec 12, Insurgents detonated a bomb alongside a U.S. military convoy west of Baghdad on Friday, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2003 Dec 12, Several people fell ill across Italy after drinking apparently tainted bottled mineral water, the latest in a scare that has prompted prosecutors to launch investigations across the nation.
(AP, 12/13/03)
2003 Dec 12, A UN conference on climate control closed in Milan, Italy. Many countries planned to go ahead with their Kyoto Protocol commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
(AP, 12/13/03)
2003 Dec 12, Ivory Coast state security forces repulsed an assault near the state television station after a two-hour battle that left 18 people dead.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2003 Dec 12, Japan pledged $3 billion in new aid to southeast Asia and promised to work with the region to bolster security ties, liberalize trade and create a broad "economic partnership.
(AP, 12/13/03)
2003 Dec 12, Three Dutch Protestant churches formally agreed to put aside their ideological differences and merge, the culmination of a process that began more than 40 years ago.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2003 Dec 12, Keiko the killer whale (27), whose early life inspired the film "Free Willy," died in Norway of apparent pneumonia.
(SFC, 12/13/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 12, Fadwa Toukan (b.1917), Palestinian poet, died in Nablus at age 86.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.A31)
2003 Dec 12, In South Korea Park Jie-won, a confidant of former Pres. Kim Dae-jung, was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in jail for taking $12.5 million in bribes from a major conglomerate and illegally remitting money to North Korea ahead of a 2000 inter-Korean summit.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2004 Dec 12, Researchers said they may have discovered what causes psoriasis, a common and irritating skin ailment.
(Reuters, 12/13/04)
2004 Dec 12, A US soldier died of wounds sustained when a roadside bomb hit his patrol in Baghdad. 8 US Marines with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force died while conducting "security and stabilization operations" in Fallujah and Ramadi in Anbar province.
(AP, 12/12/04)(SFC, 12/13/04, p.A9)
2004 Dec 12, The Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) decided to leave the ruling coalition of Pres. Lula da Silva. The principals included 6 state governors.
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.48)
2004 Dec 12, China dropped geographic restrictions against foreign insurers.
(WSJ, 12/13/04, p.A14)
2004 Dec 12, In southern China a flood at a mine trapped 36 workers in Guizhou province.
(AP, 12/12/04)
2004 Dec 12, The Israeli Cabinet agreed to release scores of Palestinian prisoners as a gesture to Egypt and the Palestinian leadership ahead of next month's Palestinian elections. The Israeli army fired three tank shells at the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday, wounding seven schoolchildren.
(AP, 12/12/04)
2004 Dec 12, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas apologized to Kuwaitis for the Palestinian support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2004 Dec 12, Palestinians detonated a massive bomb under an Israeli military checkpoint killing at least 5 Israeli soldiers.
(SFC, 12/13/04, p.A6)(AP, 12/12/05)
2004 Dec 12, In the southern Philippines a powerful explosion ripped through an outdoor market packed with Christmas shoppers, killing at least 15 people and injuring 58 others.
(AP, 12/12/04)
2004 Dec 12, Romanians returned to the polls for a presidential runoff between PM Adrian Nastase and Bucharest Mayor Traian Basescu. Reformist opposition candidate Traian Basescu won Romania's presidential runoff election.
(AP, 12/13/04)
2004 Dec 12, In Russia hundreds of Kremlin gathered on Constitution Day to denounce a re-treat from democracy as Pres. Putin signed a bill eliminating gubernatorial elections.
(SFC, 12/13/04, p.A3)
2005 Dec 12, Pres. Bush for the 1st time put a number on the death toll of Iraqi civilians saying some 30,000 had died since the start of the war with US troops looses at about 2,140.
(SFC, 12/13/05, p.A10)
2005 Dec 12, Donald Keyser, a US State Department official, pleaded guilty to removing top secret government documents while conducting a "personal relationship" with a Taiwanese spy, Isabelle Cheng, from 1992-2004.
(Reuters, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, US federal agents raided 13 San Diego-area marijuana dispensaries.
(SFC, 12/14/05, p.B3)
2005 Dec 12, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to block the imminent execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, rejecting the notion that the founder of the murderous Crips gang had atoned for his crimes and found redemption on death row.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2005 Dec 12, ConocoPhillips, the 3rd biggest US oil company, said it will acquire Burlington Resources in a deal worth $35.6 billion.
(SFC, 12/13/05, p.D2)
2005 Dec 12, PepsiCo overtook Coca-Cola in market capitalization for the 1st time.
(Econ, 12/17/05, p.61)
2005 Dec 12, Young people riding in vehicles smashed cars and store windows in suburban Sydney, a day after thousands of drunken white youths attacked people they believed were of Arab descent at a beach in the same area in one of Australia's worst outbursts of racial violence. About 50 cars had swept into the area, disgorging men of Middle Eastern appearance who began trashing every car in sight with baseball bats.
(AFP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said China surpassed the US as the world's top exporter of laptop computers, mobile phones and other information and communications technology devices in 2004.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, About 2,000 right-wing paramilitary fighters (AUC), including a warlord considered a major drug trafficker by the US, turned in weapons and helicopter gunships in one of Colombia's largest disarmament ceremonies in years.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, French counterterrorism agents, some heavily armed and wearing black hoods, raided homes and Internet cafes in a sweep against a suspected Islamic network, arresting more than 20 suspects.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, In Haiti protesters angry over the treatment of Haitian migrants in neighboring Dominican Republic clashed with police during a visit by the Dominican president, and at least three people were wounded by gunshots.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, Trade ministers gathered in Hong Kong to work on a deal to open markets and boost the global economy, with the EU quickly under fire for its refusal to cut farm subsidies further.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, In Iraq patients, soldiers and prisoners began voting in parliamentary elections, a few days ahead of the general population, while insurgent violence killed at least 12 people and wounded more than two dozen.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, Japan gave the final go-ahead to resume imports of some US beef after a two-year ban due to fears of mad cow disease, averting a potential trade war between the close political allies.
(AFP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, In Kashmir Indian troops shot dead three Islamic militants, while suspected rebels shot dead a shopkeeper in revolt-hit Kashmir.
(AFP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, In Lebanon Gibran Tueni (48), general manager and chief columnist of the An-Nahar newspaper, died when a car bomb struck his motorcade in Beirut's suburb of Mkalles. The bombing killed two other people and wounded 30 more. Tueni was killed a day after returning from France, where he had been staying periodically for fear of assassination. He was assassinated at a time when several anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians and journalists were targeted following the killing of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri. He was the son of former ambassador Ghassan Tueni.
(AP, 12/13/05)(AFP, 6/8/12)
2005 Dec 12, Swedish home-appliance maker AB Electrolux said it will close its plant in Nuremberg, Germany, by the end of 2007, transferring production to Poland and Italy and eliminating 1,750 jobs.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, The president of Turkmenistan ordered construction of a university to be named after his book "Rukhnama," which is held as a sacred text in this ex-Soviet republic.
(AP, 12/13/05)
2006 Dec 12, A US immigration sweep of 6 Swift meat plants resulted in nearly 1,300 arrests of illegal immigrants. The action culminated a 10-month investigation targeting the use of stolen social security numbers.
(Reuters, 12/13/06)(SFC, 12/13/06, p.A13)(WSJ, 12/20/06, p.B1)
2006 Dec 12, In Texas former Congressman Ciro Rodriguez defeated seven-term Republican Henry Bonilla in a runoff election, adding another Democrat to Congress.
(AP, 12/13/06)
2006 Dec 12, Online political groups, the Campaign to Defend the Constitution and the Christian Alliance for Progress, demanded that Wal-Mart dump Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a new computer game in which players must either kill or convert non-Christians.
(SFC, 12/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Dec 12, The Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. formally launched its hostile $5.3 billion takeover bid for the London Stock Exchange Group PLC, which promptly reiterated that the offer is too low and urged its shareholders to take no action on it.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, Peter Boyle (71), the actor who played the hilariously grouchy father on "Every-body Loves Raymond," died. His films “Joe" (1970), "Young Frankenstein" (1974) and “Taxi Driver" (1976).
(AP, 12/14/06)
2006 Dec 12, Alan Shugart, disk drive pioneer, died in Monterey, Ca. Shugart led a team of IBM engineers in 1969 that developed the floppy disk and went on to found Shugart Associates. In 1979 he co-founded Seagate Technology.
(SFC, 12/14/06, p.B5)
2006 Dec 12, A new environmental report said fertilizer and sediment runoff from sugarcane, banana and pineapple plantations are threatening tourism by damaging a coral reef stretching along the Caribbean coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras.
(AP, 12/13/06)
2006 Dec 12, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber blew himself up at the governor's compound in southern Helmand province, killing 8 people, including 6 policemen and 2 civilians. In eastern Afghanistan 4 "military-aged males" and a girl (13) were killed in a raid by Afghan and US-led coalition forces. 8 suspected Taliban militants were killed and a policeman wounded in a joint operation by the Afghan police and army in western Farah province.
(AP, 12/12/06)(AP, 12/14/06)
2006 Dec 12, In Belarus Alexander Kozulin, a jailed former opposition presidential candidate, ended a hunger strike after refusing food for 54 days.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, In southeastern Brazil a couple and their 5-year-old son were tied up, locked in their car and burned to death during a robbery.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, British detectives hunting a serial killer who preys on prostitutes discovered two more bodies in Ipswich, bringing the total number of victims to five.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, China’s state press reported that Liu Zhihua (57), a former Beijing vice mayor in charge of 2008 Olympic construction projects, was ousted from the ruling Communist Party for graft and faces judicial prosecution.
(AFP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, Czech president Vaclav Klaus pledged to forge closer ties with Prague's biggest African trade partner as he became the first leader from the eastern European nation to visit South Africa.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, Eritrea said it aims to become the 1st country in the world to turn its entire coast into an environmentally protected zone to ensure balanced and sustainable development.
(AFP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, Ethiopia’s former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, in exile in Zimbabwe since 1992, was convicted of genocide and other charges in a rare case of an African strongman being held to account by his own country.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, A UN-backed commission, the Int’l. Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), was established to investigate rampant organized crime in Guatemala, which authorities said has become a key point of transit for smugglers bringing drugs into the US.
(AP, 12/12/06)(Econ, 3/13/10, p.39)
2006 Dec 12, A two-day conference questioning the existence of the Nazi Holocaust ended in Tehran.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2006 Dec 12, In Iraq 2 car bombs targeting day laborers looking for work exploded within seconds of each other on a main square in central Baghdad, killing at least 63 people and wounding scores. A television cameraman working for The Associated Press was shot to death by insurgents while covering clashes in Mosul.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, Malaysia's twelfth king, Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin (63), stepped down from his post after a five-year reign to make way for the next monarch in a send-off steeped in color and tradition.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, Mexico's new president launched his first major offensive against drug gangs, sending more than 6,500 federal forces to Michoacan, his violence-plagued home state, to crack down on turf wars that have left hundreds dead in a wave of execution-style killings and beheadings. The body of Luis Felipe Zavala, cousin of Mexico's first lady Margarita Zavala, was found in his minivan in the city of Naucalpan in Mexico State.
(AP, 12/12/06)(AP, 12/14/06)
2006 Dec 12, Hamas gunmen fired on demonstrators from the rival Fatah movement, wounding four people and intensifying fears of a new wave of Palestinian infighting.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, In Rwanda an ex-Interahamwe member said that he had participated in trans-porting weapons from a French military plane in the former Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo, to the north Rwanda province of Gisenyi during the 1994 genocide. Witness #4 told a Rwandan commission that French troops raped women fleeing militia gangs during the African country's 1994 genocide.
(AFP, 12/12/06)(Reuters, 12/13/06)
2006 Dec 12, Russia's Gazprom closed in on half of Royal Dutch Shell's $22 billion Sakhalin-2 energy project while Shell denied it had buckled under Kremlin pressure and warned Moscow the world was watching.
(AP, 12/12/06)(WSJ, 12/12/06, p.A3)
2006 Dec 12, Somalia’s PM Ali Mohamed Gedi said thousands of Islamic militants have sur-rounded Baidoa, the only town the internationally recognized government controls, as a top Islamic official promised to attack within a week unless Ethiopian troops leave.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, South Korea opened the world's largest garbage-fuelled power plant and expects to reduce its imports of heavy oil by 500,000 barrels a year as a result. South Korea currently relies heavily on nuclear power plants which supply 40% of demand.
(AFP, 12/13/06)
2006 Dec 12, Hundreds of Spanish police and security officials arrested at least 11 suspected Islamic militants in pre-dawn raids in Ceuta, a tiny Spanish enclave on Morocco's coast.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, In St. Vincent Sean Samuel beheaded Stacy Wilson, a 21-year-old woman, in front of horrified onlookers at a bus terminal in Kingstown.
(AP, 12/13/06)
2006 Dec 12, The UN inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said it has now identified suspects and witnesses and found possible links to 14 other murders or attempted murders in Lebanon in the last two years.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2007 Dec 12, President George W. Bush vetoed a second bill that would have expanded government-provided health insurance for children.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2007 Dec 12, Republican presidential rivals gathered in Johnston, Iowa, called for deep cuts in federal spending in a debate remarkably free of acrimony.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2007 Dec 12, The US announced that it has sent 15 prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay prison back to their home nations.
(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 12, Three British oil executives pleaded guilty in a Houston court to price-fixing. They were accused of conspiring from 1999-2007 to fix the prices of millions of dollars worth of marine hoses used to transfer oil between tankers and storage facilities. They were permitted to return to Britain and to plead guilty to charges there.
(www.thelawyer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=130424&d=415&h=417&f=416)
2007 Dec 12, Igor Olenicoff (65), California billionaire real estate developer, pleaded guilty to lying on his tax returns and paid $52 million in back taxes, one of the largest individual tax cases in Southern California history.
(www.ocregister.com/money/olenicoff-tax-million-1940962-company-agreement)
2007 Dec 12, Police in northern California arrested Art Cheney, a winery tour guide dubbed “The Highway 101 Bandit," following his robbery of a bank in Fairfield. He had robbed at least 17 banks, including at least 8 in the Bay Area, most of which were on the Highway 101 corridor. In 2008 Cheney (65) was sentenced to 90 months in prison and ordered to pay back the $50,760 that he stole.
(SFC, 12/14/07, p.A1)(SFC, 10/21/08, p.B3)
2007 Dec 12, Ike Turner (b.1931), R&B pioneer and former husband of Tina Turner, died due to a cocaine overdose at his home outside San Diego. He presided over the 1951 recording of “Rocket 88," frequently cited as the first rock ’n’ roll record. In 1966 Phil Spector produced “River Deep – Mountain High" with Ike and Tina. The pair split in 1976. In 1989 Ike went to prison on drug charges and was still there when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.
(SFC, 12/13/07, p.B5)(Econ, 12/22/07, p.142)(SFC, 1/17/08, p.A7)
2007 Dec 12, Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said Afghan soldiers backed by NATO air power killed more than 50 Taliban fighters during a two-day battle with militants who tried to attack Sangin near Musa Qala, where they were routed from this week. A suicide car bomb exploded near an Afghan army convoy in the southern city of Kandahar, killing one person.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, A new report said the trafficking of Bulgarian women as sex slaves brings in about 1.8 billion euros ($2.6 billion) a year for the gangs behind it, making it the country's most profitable criminal activity.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, China launched a nationwide recall system that shifts responsibility to companies to recall harmful drugs. In eastern China a fire tore through an apartment building, killing at least 21 people and injuring two others.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, In Colombia 3 young highway bandits set fire to a bus during a botched robbery near Bogota, burning to death 10 people including 2 assailants and the bus driver. The 3rd assailant (23) was arrested.
(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 12, Tropical Storm Olga soaked portions of the Caribbean, triggering floods and landslides that killed at least 38 people in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico.
(AP, 12/12/07)(AP, 12/13/07)(WSJ, 12/15/07, p.A1)
2007 Dec 12, The European Central Bank said it would take joint action with the US Federal Reserve and other institutions to offer short-term funding to the money markets to help ease a global credit squeeze. The ECB said it would provide as much as $20 billion to European banks, in part to fill their demand for dwindling dollars.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, Ashraf Juma Hajuj, the Palestinian-born doctor held with five Bulgarian nurses in a Libyan prison for over eight years, filed suit in Paris against Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi for torture. The six medics, who always maintained their innocence, said they were subjected to torture, including beatings, electric shocks, food and sleep deprivation, and even sexual abuse, in order to confess to their alleged crime.
(AFP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 12, Tens of thousands of demonstrators jammed central Athens and the northern city of Thessaloniki as a general strike to protest government plans to reform the country's debt-ridden pension system brought Greece to a standstill.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, India announced major plans to increase its nuclear capabilities, saying it was close to testing a ballistic missile capable of hitting targets up to 6,000 kilometers (3,800 miles) away.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, In Indonesia new Australian PM Kevin Rudd completed ratification of the Kyoto Protocol as he pressed for all nations, rich and poor, to commit to fighting global warming.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, Three car bombs exploded in quick succession in the market district of Amarah, a southern Iraqi city, killing at least 25 people with 150 wounded. The city is the provincial capital of Maysan province, which borders Iran. In eastern Baghdad a parked car bomb apparently targeting a passing police patrol killed five civilians. 13 people were wounded in the late after-noon explosion in Ghadeer. In the Kurdish dominated town of Khanaqin, 90 miles northeast of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed four civilians and wounded 12. A mass grave holding 16 bodies, all but four of them decapitated, was found in a palm grove in a former al-Qaida in Iraq stronghold outside Muqdadiyah. US soldiers killed two suspected insurgents and destroyed a weapons cache in the village of Bawi, on the outskirts of Salman Pak.
(AP, 12/12/07)(AP, 12/13/07)(AP, 12/12/08)
2007 Dec 12, The renewal of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians got off to a rocky start, with the Palestinians criticizing Israel for a construction project planned in disputed east Jerusalem, and Israel complaining about continued rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, It was reported that Italy's government has decided to appoint a special com-missioner to try to curb price rises after inflation hit a three-and-a-half year peak in November, but economists see the move as little more than a publicity stunt. Italy's truck drivers agreed to call off a protest that has blocked highways and borders for three days, causing shortages of gasoline, medicine and perishable foods across Italy.
(Reuters, 12/12/07)(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, A car bomb attack killed one of Lebanon's top generals and at least two other people. Brig. Gen. Francois Hajj (55), a top Maronite Catholic in the command, was considered a leading candidate to succeed the head of the military, Gen. Michel Suleiman, if Suleiman is elected president.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, It was reported that William Kamkwamba (20) of Masitala, Malawi, had built 3 windmills using blue-gum trees and bicycle parts after seeing a picture in an old text book.
(WSJ, 12/12/07, p.A1)
2007 Dec 12, The former governor of Nigeria's oil rich Delta state, James Ibori, was arrested on corruption and money-laundering charges. His state salary was less than $25,000 per year. In August a court in London ordered a freeze on $35 million of his worldwide assets.
(AP, 12/12/07)(Econ, 1/5/08, p.38)
2007 Dec 12, Pakistani troops killed 20 militants in an ongoing offensive against supporters of a pro-Taliban cleric in the restive northwestern valley of Swat. Residents said troops shot dead one person and wounded two others for violating curfew restrictions in the town of Fizaghat.
(AFP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, Palestinian pedestrians gawked at the unusual sight of female police officers directing traffic in Ramallah, the first batch of women to venture into a job traditionally reserved for men in the West Bank.
(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 12, US federal agents and local police launched raids in several Puerto Rican cities with arrest warrants for 121 drug suspects.
(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 12, Russia ordered a British cultural organization to suspend all of its operations outside Moscow at the beginning of 2008, the latest move in a long-running dispute. Russian officials accused the British Council, a non-governmental organization that acts as the cultural department of the British Embassy, of operating illegally in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, Veteran diplomat Yuli Vorontsov (78), who served the Soviet Union and Russia as ambassador to Afghanistan (1988-99) and the United States (1994-2000) in a career spanning the Cold War and the Gulf War, died in Moscow.
(AP, 12/14/07)
2007 Dec 12, Pirates freed a Japanese chemical tanker loaded with highly explosive benzene off the coast of Somalia, six weeks after seizing the vessel and its crew.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12-2007 Dec 14, In South Africa 49 patients, all with multidrug resistant (MDR) and extremely drug resistant (XDR) TB, escaped through holes they had cut through the perimeter fences of Jose Pearson Hospital in Port Elizabeth.
(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317354,00.html)
2007 Dec 12, Officials said South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic dis-eases.
(AFP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, North and south Sudanese leaders said they had resolved almost all their differences and that the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement would soon rejoin the unity cabinet.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, Thailand smashed through the 100-gold barrier at the SEA Games as they continued their relentless pursuit of top spot on the medals table.
(AFP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, The UN Yugoslav war crimes tribunal at The Hague sentenced former Bosnian Serb general Dragomir Milosevic (b.1942) to 33 years imprisonment for the shelling of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, one of the court's toughest sentences. In 2009 UN judges trimmed the sentence from 33 to 29 years but upheld his convictions for leading troops who terrorized Sarajevo with a deadly rain of shells and sniper bullets.
(AP, 12/12/07)(AP, 11/12/09)
2008 Dec 12, The White House and the Treasury said they were considering diverting money from the Wall Street rescue fund to stave off bankruptcy filings among the carmakers. General Motors Corp. said it will temporarily close 20 factories across North America and make sweeping cuts to its vehicle production as it tries to adjust to dramatically weaker automobile demand.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, The Bush administration issued a regulation exempting farms from reporting releases of hazardous air pollution from animal waste to federal, state and local authorities. The white House also approved a coal mining rule that makes it easier for some firms to dump rock and sludge near rivers.
(SFC, 12/13/08, p.A9)(WSJ, 12/13/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 12, In Woodburn, Oregon, a bomb exploded inside a branch of the West Coast Bank, killing a police officer and a state bomb disposal technician. Police arrested Joshua A. Turnidge (32), a steelworker, in Salem on Dec 14. Joshua’s father, Bruce Turnidge (57), was also soon arrested and charged with the bombing. In 2010 Bruce Turnidge and his son were convicted on 18 counts related to the bank bombing.
(AP, 12/13/08)(SSFC, 12/14/08, p.A6)(SFC, 12/15/08, p.A3)(SFC, 12/16/08, p.A4)(WSJ, 12/27/08, p.A2)(SFC, 12/9/10, p.A18)
2008 Dec 12, Cardinal Avery Dulles died in NYC. His more than 20 books included “Models of the Church" (1974). Dulles, the son of former Sec. of State John Foster Dulles, joined the Jesuits after he was discharged from the Navy in 1946.
(SFC, 12/13/08, p.B5)(http://ncrcafe.org/node/401)
2008 Dec 12, Van Johnson (b.1916), Hollywood film star, died in Nyack, NY. His boy-next-door wholesomeness made him a popular Hollywood star in the '40s and '50s with such films as "30 Seconds over Tokyo," "A Guy Named Joe" and "The Caine Mutiny."
(AP, 12/12/08)(SFC, 12/13/08, p.A5)
2008 Dec 12, In central Afghanistan NATO troops fired on a civilian bus that refused warnings to stop, killing four passengers in Wardak province.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, A court in Australia approved the use of Facebook, a popular social networking Web site, to notify a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan.
(AP, 12/16/08)
2008 Dec 12, Belgian authorities charged six suspected al-Qaida-linked extremists with membership in a terrorist group. They including a woman whose husband was involved in the assassination of Afghanistan's that killed anti-Taliban warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud, shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, In Chile admirers of former dictator Augusto Pinochet inaugurated a museum in his honor, a move they hope will burnish the image of a man reviled by much of the world.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Colombia extradited Diego Montoya, one of its most notorious drug trafficking suspects, to the United States to stand trial. Colombian authorities said he sent tons of cocaine to the United States and is responsible for at least 1,500 killings in a two-decade career.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Tassos Papadopoulos (b.1934), Cyprus' hardline former president (2003-2008), died of lung cancer in Nicosia. He had ushered the divided island into the European Union (2004) after rallying Greek Cypriots to reject a UN peace deal.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Ecuador’s Pres. Rafael Correa said his nation will skip a $30.6 million payment to bondholders due on Dec 15. This was Ecuador’s 3rd default in 3 decades.
(WSJ, 12/12/08, p.A8)(Econ, 7/4/09, p.34)
2008 Dec 12, Estonia’s parliament passed a law making it the first country to allow cellphone voting.
(WSJ, 12/13/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 12, European Union leaders agreed to give concessions to Ireland so it will hold a new referendum on the EU's stalled Lisbon reform treaty, which aims to make the 27-nation bloc a stronger player on the world stage.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Greek youths hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at riot police in Athens, who responded with stun grenades and tear gas. Despite seven straight days of unrest, Greece's prime minister rebuffed calls to resign and hold early elections.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, In Guatemala a mob in San Pedro Solom beat and then shot to death five men suspected of kidnapping a 15-year-old girl.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Nigeria's Pres. Umaru Yar'Adua vowed to speed up electoral reforms after overcoming a legal challenge to his election and receiving a report on problems with the country's electoral laws. The Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to dismiss a suit by opposition leaders, but conceded that widespread irregularities had occurred in his 2006 election.
(AFP, 12/12/08)(SSFC, 12/14/08, p.A20)
2008 Dec 12, Pakistan stage overnight raids, shut offices and arrested scores of activists of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), an Islamic charity associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba, as international pressure mounted for firm action against militants blamed for the Mumbai attacks. Maulana Masood Azhar, head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad group, blamed with Lashkar-e-Taiba for a 2001 attack on India's parliament, was also detained.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, The chief Palestinian negotiators said Israel proposed to annex 6.8 percent of the West Bank and to take in a few thousand refugees under a peace deal, but it has not revealed its position on the most contentious issue, the future of Jerusalem.
(AP, 12/13/08)
2008 Dec 12, In Poland negotiators at a UN climate conference broke through red tape and freed up millions of dollars to help poor countries adapt to increasingly severe droughts, floods and other effects of global warming.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Sir David Barclay and his twin brother, Sir Frederick Barclay, abruptly closed their businesses on the Channel Island of Sark and shut off the flow of investment after their candidates for the island's first elected parliament were largely rejected by voters. Only two of the nine candidates backed by the brothers won seats in the legislature. Nine of the 12 candidates they had denounced as "dangerous to Sark's future" were elected.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, In Sri Lanka clashes with troops left 10 rebels dead near their de facto northern capital.
(AP, 12/13/08)
2008 Dec 12, Switzerland became the 25th member of the passport-free zone of the Schengen countries, after interior and justice ministers of the 27 EU member states formally approved the accession of this non-EU country on Nov 27. The number of Chinese visitors quickly soared.
(www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home/reps/eur/vbel/ref_visinf/visbel.html)(Econ, 12/18/10, p.116)
2008 Dec 12, Taiwanese prosecutors indicted former President Chen Shui-bian on graft charges, a stunning blow for a man who rode to power 8 1/2 years ago on promises to reform the island's corrupt political culture.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, In Thailand a commercial fishing commission agreed to cut the catches of bigeye tuna in parts of the Pacific Ocean, a small step in an effort to save a threatened species that is a favorite among sushi lovers. Environmentalists lambasted the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission's decision to reduce catches by only 10 percent in each of the next three years. They wanted an immediate 30 percent reduction that scientists advising the body had recommended.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, A UN Security Council panel said that Rwanda and Congo are fighting a proxy war by aiding each other's enemies, a conclusion that could lead to additional UN sanctions over the conflict in the central African region. A UN report cited an advisor to Rwandan President Paul Kagame and a member of the Congolese opposition, both wealthy businessmen, as key financial backers of rebels in eastern DR Congo.
(AP, 12/12/08)(AFP, 12/13/08)
2008 Dec 12, The Vatican raised its opposition to embryonic stem cell research, the morning-after pill, in vitro fertilization and human cloning to a new level in a major new document on bio-ethics.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Zimbabwe's central bank introduced a 500 million dollar note, as the African country struggles to cope with the world's highest inflation and crippling currency shortages.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2009 Dec 12, President Barack Obama singled out financial institutions for causing much of the economic tailspin and criticized their opposition to tighter federal oversight of their industry. The Democratic-controlled US Senate cleared away a Republican filibuster of a huge end-of-year spending bill that rewards most federal agencies with generous budget boosts.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Houston became the largest US city to elect an openly gay mayor, with voters handing a solid victory to City Controller Annise Parker (53) after a hotly contested runoff.
(AP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 12, Alabama running back Mark Ingram won this year’s Heisman trophy.
(AP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Berkeley, Ca., police arrested 8 people after a crowd of angry protesters broke windows and threw burning torches at the campus residence of UC chancellor Robert Birgeneau in protest over fee hikes and budget cuts.
(SSFC, 12/13/09, p.C1)
2009 Dec 12, In New York state truck driver Thomas Wallace hit a disabled car killing Julie Stratton (33). The car was disabled after hitting a deer. On Sep 1, 2010, Wallace was sentenced to 3-9 years in prison after pleading guilty to 2nd degree murder. His laptop computer was streaming pornography when his rig hit the disabled car.
(SFC, 9/2/10, p.A6)
2009 Dec 12, Abkhazia held elections. Preliminary results indicated that President Sergei Bagapsh defeated four other candidates. About 70% of the 130,000 registered voters took part in the vote. The province is also home to some 40,000 ethnic Georgians who are not eligible to vote because they don't hold Abkhazian passports. An estimated 200,000 ethnic Georgians fled Abkhazia in the 1990s.
(AP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Afghanistan Wahibuddin Sadat, the deputy mayor of Kabul, was arrested for alleged misuse of authority, part of a crackdown in the wake of massive international criticism of corruption in President Hamid Karzai's government. 3 Taliban fighters were killed when a road-side bomb they were planting exploded in Helmand province. 4 Afghan private security guards were killed when their car hit a roadside bomb elsewhere in Helmand.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, In China Liu Aibing (34) went on a rampage with his shotgun killing 12 people including his father. He was apprehended the next day in Gaoming town in Hunan province's Anhua county. Liu also seriously injured two other people and set six homes on fire. He was said to have had a long history of mental illness.
(AP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 12, It was reported that Cuba has detained an American government contractor and accused him of distributing cell phones, laptops and other communications equipment to political opposition groups on the island.
(SFC, 12/12/09, p.A2)
2009 Dec 12, In Denmark violence broke out in Copenhagen as tens of thousands took to the streets to demand tough measures on climate change, with demonstrators around the world rallying for action instead of words.
(AFP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Honduras a Foreign Ministry spokesman says Honduras will grant ousted Pres. Zelaya safe passage to any country that offers him asylum outside Central America.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Hong Kong 5 women and a man suffered burns in the incident in Causeway Bay, one of a spate of acid attacks in the city. One woman's face and chest were badly injured, with burns covering nearly 20 percent of her body. On Jan 14 police charged a 23-year-old man over the acid attack.
(AFP, 1/14/10)(www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/200912/13/P200912130264.htm)
2009 Dec 12, In India 20 state ministers resigned amid mounting street demonstrations and violence to protest India's decision to carve a new state out of southern Andhra Pradesh state.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Iran said it is ready to exchange the bulk of its stockpile of enriched uranium for nuclear fuel rods, as proposed by the UN, but according to its own mechanisms and timetable. Iran also said it needs up to 15 nuclear plants to generate electricity. Tens of thousands of hard-line clerics rallied in cities across the country to denounce student protesters who burned photos of the country's supreme leader in a taboo-shattering act earlier in the week.
(AP, 12/12/09)(Reuters, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Iraq sold Russian firm Lukoil rights to the West Qurna-2 oil field, one of the world's biggest untapped oil fields, on the 2nd day of an auction. Lukoil will work with junior partner StatoilHydro of Norway.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Italy at least 5 sperm whales died after a pod of nine beached on the southern coast. Experts called it a rare and puzzling mass beaching for such a large species. Officials were considering euthanizing the last two whales still trapped in high waves.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Kenya 12 players of the Eritrean national football squad failed to show up at the airport to return home. They were later reported to have disappeared in Nairobi with the intention of seeking asylum.
(AFP, 12/15/09)
2009 Dec 12, Human Rights Watch announced a report saying Libya continues to subject political dissidents to arbitrary detention and unfair trials despite limited improvements in freedom of expression since the country began to shed its pariah status in 2003.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Pakistan’s PM Yousuf Raza Gilani said his government may launch a new military offensive in Orakzai district near the Afghan border. Insurgent leaders are believed to have fled there to escape a government onslaught against the Taliban in South Waziristan. Interior Minister Rehman Malik mentioned North Waziristan as another potential front, though military officials have been loathe to say whether they would want to extend the fight there.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Al-Qaida issued a new English-language video denying it was behind a series of bombings in Pakistan that have killed hundreds of civilians, calling such attacks un-Islamic.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, A Palestinian man made homeless by last winter's Gaza war was the first to receive a UN-funded mud brick home, with UN aid officials saying they're reverting to ancient building techniques because Israel won't allow concrete and other construction materials into blockaded Gaza. A Palestinian farmer was killed when he was caught in the crossfire of a shootout between militants and Israeli soldiers in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
(AP, 12/12/09)(AFP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Rwanda held elections. President Paul Kagame was reelected with a crushing majority to head the Rwandan Patriotic Front party that has been in power since 1994.
(AFP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 12, Saudi newspapers said Saudi ground forces and Apache attack helicopters had battled Huthi fighters for two days at the Al-Jabri post on the Yemeni border in the southern province of Yemen, and repulsed attempted Huthi incursions. Saudi military denied a claim by Yemen's Huthi rebels that they seized a Saudi border post.
(AFP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, In South Africa drums and traditional dancers kicked off the Miss World pageant in Johannesburg. The glitzy night began in the shadow of reports that one contestant was linked to a religious cult. Kaiane Aldorino from Gibraltar was named the new Miss World.
(AFP, 12/12/09)(AP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Thailand 4 Kazakhs and a Belarusian were detained and their New Zealand registered aircraft impounded after it landed in the Thai capital with tons of war weaponry on board that originated in North Korea. The Ilyushin 76 transport from Kazakhstan was allegedly traveling from North Korea to Sri Lanka when it asked to land in Bangkok to refuel. According to a flight plan seen by arms trafficking researchers, the aircraft was chartered by Hong Kong-based Union Top Management Ltd. to fly oil industry spare parts from Pyongyang to Tehran, Iran, with several other stops, including Bangkok, Colombo in Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan and Ukraine. A New Zealand shell company, SP Trading Ltd., had leased the airplane.
(AP, 12/12/09)(AP, 12/23/09)(AP, 1/22/10)
2009 Dec 12, In Turkey angry Kurds battled Turkish police with rocks and firebombs to pro-test a decision by the country's top court to shut down a pro-Kurdish political party on charges of ties to militants.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was re-elected as ZANU-PF leader for the next five years, urging supporters to work for the survival of the party. Mugabe said the unity government is short-lived and he plans to regain his hold over the country.
(AFP, 12/12/09)(AP, 12/13/09)
2010 Dec 12, The Washington Post reported that 8 out of the 12 top US gun dealers whose products fuel Mexico's drug violence are located in the state of Texas. 3 others were in Arizona, and one was in California. There are 3,800 gun retailers in Texas, 300 in Houston alone.
(AFP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, A storm that spanned parts of eight states continued to dump heavy snow in the upper Midwest, collapsing the Metrodome in Minneapolis and forcing numerous road closures.
(AP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, In Long Beach, Ca., police officers shot Doug Zerby (35) over a dozen times as he manipulated a pistol grip water nozzle. The shooting spurred street protests. Prosecutors in 2011 said police acted lawfully in killing Zerby, who was drunk at the time. His family filed a federal civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit against the city.
(SFC, 11/4/11, p.C6)
2010 Dec 12, In southern Afghanistan an insurgent attack killed at least six foreign troops and two Afghan soldiers in Kandahar's Zhari district. Several suspects were arrested for the suicide attack that killed six US troops when an explosives-packed minibus blew up at the entrance of a joint NATO-Afghan base.
(Reuters, 12/12/10)(AP, 12/13/10)
2010 Dec 12, Australia unveiled tough changes to finance laws, banning unpopular mortgage fees and cracking down on price collusion between major banks in a bid to boost competition in the sector.
(AFP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, Bangladesh's Dhaka Stock Exchange plunged 3.32%, its biggest one-day fall since the index was introduced in 2001. Garment workers demanding the implementation of a new minimum wage clashed with police at an industrial zone in the southeast, leaving up to three people dead and 100 hurt.
(AFP, 12/12/10)(AP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, Hundreds of Egyptian activists and members of opposition groups protested against what they said were violations during a parliamentary vote that handed the ruling party a huge victory last month.
(Reuters, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, In Iran Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a prominent reformist journalist and head of the Journalists' Association of Iran, said he has been sentenced to 16 months in jail on charges of insulting Pres. Ahmadinejad and undermining the Islamic regime. Shamsolvaezin went on trial in October and has 20 days to appeal. Sajjad Qaderzadeh, the son of a woman whose death sentence by stoning caused world outrage, was released after paying a $40,000 bail.
(AFP, 12/12/10)(AP, 1/1/10)
2010 Dec 12, In Iraq a suicide bomber blew up his car outside government offices in Ramadi, killing at least 13 people, including women and elderly people waiting to collect welfare checks. Six police officers were among the dead. Near Baquba a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vest near an Ashura procession, killing three people.
(AP, 12/12/10)(AFP, 12/13/10)(SFC, 12/13/10, p.A3)
2010 Dec 12, Kosovars voted in the first general poll since the country's declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008, a critical election already marred by ethnic tension that many fear will split the world's newest country.
(AP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, Heavy rain and fierce winds pummeled countries across the Middle East, killing a woman in Lebanon, sinking a ship off Israel's coast and prompting Egypt to close its largest Mediterranean port. At least 3 people killed in Egypt as gale-force winds and torrential rain pounded the coastline.
(AP, 12/12/10)(AFP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, A foundation run by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam, released a mixed annual report on human rights in Libya, noting progress on some issues and failures in others.
(AFP, 12/13/10)
2010 Dec 12, Mexican police arrested Enrique Lopez of the notorious Sinaloa drug trafficking operation based in the northern Mexico town of Chihuahua. His brother, Ever Horacio Lopez, was shot and killed in the standoff with police. The men were lieutenants of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, said to be Mexico's most wanted man, who is believed to have escaped.
(AFP, 12/13/10)
2010 Dec 12, Nigeria's military said it had taken control of eight camps belonging to Ateke Tom, a militant leader in southern Rivers State. In the southeast Obioma Nwankwo, a gang leader accused of kidnapping children from a school bus, was killed. An unknown number of alleged gang members also died. 6 others were arrested. The operation freed a family of five.
(AFP, 12/13/10)
2010 Dec 12, Lawyers for a Sudanese campaign group launched a legal bid to halt Sudan's referendum on southern independence, accusing organizers of mishandling the process, a move which could derail the January 9 vote.
(Reuters, 12/12/10)
2011 Dec 12, In Oakland, Ca., some 3,000 Occupy protesters shut down the Port of Oakland for the evening shift.
(SFC, 12/13/11, p.A1)
2011 Dec 12, The Illinois House approved a package of tax relief for families and businesses, including big names like Sears and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, that threatened to leave the state. When fully phased in the cuts will cost state government some $320 million per year.
(SFC, 12/13/11, p.A11)
2011 Dec 12, In Utah some 4000-5000 migratory birds, eared grebes, were killed or injured after apparently mistaking a Wal-Mart parking lot, football fields and other snow-covered areas of southern Utah for bodies of water and plummeting to the ground in what one state wildlife expert called the worst mass bird crash she'd ever seen. A high-profile crash in Arkansas in January killed about 4,500 birds, mainly red-winged blackbirds.
(AP, 12/14/11)
2011 Dec 12, In Washington state 2 reconnaissance helicopters crashed during training near Tacoma killing all 4 people on board.
(SFC, 12/14/11, p.A8)
2011 Dec 12, Senior Australian naval officer Lieutenant Commander John Alan Jones (58) was convicted by a court martial of repeatedly spanking a junior female sailor to test her discipline and obedience.
(AFP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 12, Canada became the first country to declare it was formally exiting the Kyoto protocol, a reversal that will save it billions of dollars in fines. Canada had agreed under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce CO2 emissions to 6.0 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, but its emissions of the gasses blamed for damaging Earth's fragile climate system have instead increased sharply.
(AFP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 12, China executed Janice Linden (35), a South African woman, by lethal injection for drug smuggling after rejecting last-minute pleas for clemency from her government. She was convicted of trying to sneak three kg (6.6 pounds) of methamphetamine into the country in her luggage through the southern city of Guangzhou in 2008. Amnesty International says China executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined.
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, In eastern China a school bus taking primary students home slipped off a country road into an irrigation ditch, killing 15 children in Jiangsu province.
(AP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 12, A Chinese captain stabbed two South Korean coast guard officers, killing one, after his fishing boat was stopped for illegally fishing in South Korean waters.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Colombia extradited Ramon Quintero, a top Norte del Valle cartel trafficker, to the United States. His organization was accused of exporting more than 50 metric tons of cocaine a year to the US and Europe.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, International Criminal Court (ICC) member states, meeting at The Hague, unanimously elected Fatou Bensouda of Gambia as the new chief prosecutor for the main genocide and war crimes tribunal.
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, The world court (ICC) said it was referring Malawi to the UN Security Council over its refusal to arrest Sudan's Pres. Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the court for genocide, during his October visit for a meeting of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, The head of Iran's parliamentary national security committee said Iran will reverse-engineer the US drone it has in its possession, and is in the "final stages" of unlocking the aircraft's software secrets.
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, The Efrat settlement mayor said Israel's government has approved 40 new houses to replace trailers at the West Bank settlement, drawing criticism from Palestinians. The trailers at the site, known as Givat Hadagan, were put up without authorization.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Dozens of Jewish settlers broke into an army base in the West Bank and lit fires, damaged vehicles and threw stones at a senior officer, just hours after another group took over an abandoned building in a closed military zone on the border with Jordan. The settlers were reportedly protesting the planned evacuations of unauthorized settlement outposts.
(AP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 12, In Kenya an explosion wounded six people, including a high-ranking intelligence official, in the northern town of Wajir during celebrations of Kenya's Independence Day.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, In Mexico 2 students were killed during a clash with state and federal police at a violent protest that blocked a major highway in Guerrero state. Protesting students had hijacked buses and set fire to a gasoline station before federal police fired tear gas at the protesters and then shots rang out. Some 300 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college staged the protest seeking to persuade the state government "to meet their educational demands.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Mexican marines captured Raul Lucio Hernandez Lechuga, a founding member of the brutal Zetas drug cartel, in the city of Cordoba, Veracruz state.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Veteran PNG leader Sir Michael Somare (75) was reinstated as Papua New Guinea's prime minister when the Supreme Court ruled the election of Peter O'Neill was unconstitutional.
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, In the Philippines the House of Representatives impeached chief justice Renato Corona over charges his 15-member court had made a series of rulings that hindered government moves to prosecute ex-leader Gloria Arroyo. The proceedings will move to the Senate, where a trial will determine if Corona must step down.
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Mikhail Prokhorov (46), one of Russia's richest tycoons and the owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team, said he will run against PM Vladimir Putin in the March presidential election. Prokhorov made his fortune, estimated by Forbes at $18 billion, in metals and banking.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Saudi authorities executed a woman convicted of practicing magic and sorcery. The woman was arrested in April, 2009, and later convicted in a Saudi court. Religious police, who arrested the woman, said she had tricked people into thinking she could treat illnesses, charging them $800 per session.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Syrians closed their businesses and kept children home from school in several parts of the country in a show of civil disobedience against the regime as a new and fierce round of clashes between troops and army defectors spread. Syrians voted in municipal elections even as violence raged in some parts of the country where security forces were pressing a deadly crackdown against dissent. Border guards intercepted 15 gunmen trying to infiltrate from Turkey. Two were reported killed in the ensuing firefight and others were injured.
(AP, 12/12/11)(AFP, 12/12/11)(AP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 12, In southern Yemen a protester was wounded in Aden when police dispersed hundreds of demonstrators demanding a secession of southern regions. A security official said 12 alleged Al-Qaeda militants plus two other inmates have tunneled their way to freedom from a prison in Aden. Al-Qaeda linked gunman fired on a military vehicle killing three soldiers and wounding 11 others near the southern city of Zinjibar.
(AFP, 12/12/11)(AP, 12/12/11)(AFP, 12/13/11)
2012 Dec 12, In California Darcey Greenfield, a former Los Angeles police officer, was arrested on charges of bilking people out of at least $3 million in a real estate investment scheme.
(SSFC, 12/16/12, p.A12)
2012 Dec 12, In Argentina the acquittal of 13 people accused in the disappearance of a young woman who was allegedly kidnapped and forced into prostitution for "VIP clients" spread shock and outrage across the country, prompting street protests and calls by political leaders to impeach the three judges who delivered the verdict.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Royal Navy Petty Officer Edward Devenney was sentenced to eight years in prisons for passing nuclear submarine secrets to British intelligence agents impersonating Russian spies.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, A rebel group that signed a peace accord with the government of the Central African Republic announced that it has taken three towns in the country's north, in a move that is intended to force the state to review the six-year-old accord.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Chinese religious officials said they have revoked the title of new Catholic Bishop Ma Daqin in Shanghai. He outraged officials by immediately dropping out of the government agency that oversees the country's officially sanctioned church.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Egypt's opposition alliance urged supporters to vote "No" in the referendum on a disputed constitution rather than boycotting, hours after the Islamist government forged ahead by starting overseas voting in diplomatic missions for expatriates. The full referendum was initially scheduled to take place on Dec 15, but in a last minute decree on Dec 11, Morsi ordered the voting stretched into another round on Dec 22.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said more than 100 countries have recognized a new Syrian opposition coalition. Fabius called the "Friends of the Syrian People" conference meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, "extraordinary progress." US and NATO said President Bashar Assad's forces had fired Scud missiles at rebel areas.
(AP, 12/12/12)(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Dec 12, German lawmakers in the Bundestag passed legislation ensuring parents the right to have their boys circumcised. The upper house, Bundesrat, was expected to also pass it.
(SFC, 12/13/12, p.A5)
2012 Dec 12, Guatemala released John McAfee from a detention center and put him on a plan for Miami. Authorities in Belize had sought McAfee for questioning about the November slaying of neighbor Gregory Faull.
(SFC, 12/13/12, p.A7)
2012 Dec 12, Honduras President Porfirio Lobo's National Party overwhelmingly and, many say illegally, approved the the dismissal of 4 judges who had rejected the president's plan to weed out corrupt police.
(AP, 12/14/12)
2012 Dec 12, Iran's deputy judiciary chief said the Islamic Republic has issued indictments against 18 unnamed current and former American officials on charges of involvement in "crimes against Iran." His remarks did not indicate that any of the men were present in Iran.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, In Iraq a suspected al-Qaida detainee tried to blow himself up inside a prison cell in Baghdad, wounding himself and six others.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Israel's paramilitary border police force in Hebron shot and killed Mohammed Suleima (17) after he brandished a gun that later turned out to be fake.
(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Dec 12, Japan’s Honda Motor Co said it will recall 871,000 vehicles that could roll away after the ignition key has been removed, including 807,000 in the United States.
(Reuters, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Kuwait's ruler named a new Cabinet that makes no major changes in membership and reinstates the finance minister who resigned earlier this year under pressure from opposition lawmakers.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan said he would formally ban students from smoking marijuana at school, making the Dutch capital the first city in the Netherlands to do so.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, In Northern Ireland protests began when the Belfast city council voted to limit the number of days the union flag is flown over city hall to about 20 a year.
(Econ, 1/12/13, p.50)
2012 Dec 12, North Korea launched its Unha rocket, named after the Korean word for "galaxy." The 3-stage rocket blasted off from the Sohae launch pad in Tongchang-ri, northwest of Pyongyang, and put a satellite into orbit.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Russia's President Vladimir Putin vowed to strengthen the country's economy and its military might and rejected what he described as foreign lecturing about democracy and attempts at foreign interference in the nation's internal affairs.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Spanish authorities said they have arrested a Panamanian woman arriving at Barcelona airport from Bogota, Colombia, with 1.38 kg (3 pounds) of cocaine concealed in breast implants.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, A UN war crimes court at The Hague convicted Gen. Zdravko Tolimir, a Bosnian Serb commander, of genocide for playing a key role in the July, 1995, massacre at Srebrenica.
(SFC, 12/13/12, p.A5)
2013 Dec 12, The Obama adminsitration announced an expanded list of Iranian companies and individuals that it said it would target to block their trading activities around the world due to sanctions violations.
(SFC, 12/13/13, p.A11)
2013 Dec 12, US authorities said three Chinese nationals have been charged in two separate cases of trying to steal seed-technology, trade secrets under development in the United States.
(Reuters, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, USAID acting Mission Director Christopher Cushing said a decision to leave Ecuador by Sep 2014 comes as a result of Ecuador’s decision to prohibit approval of new USAID assistance programs.
(CSM, 12/14/13)
2013 Dec 12, US federal bus regulators said they have shut down over 50 motor coach companies in a nationwide crackdown on unsafe outfits.
(SFC, 12/13/13, p.A13)
2013 Dec 11, In Minnesota Keith Michael Novak (25) was put under federal custody following fraud charges in connection with the ID theft of some 400 members of his former Army unit in Fort Bragg, NC.
(SFC, 12/13/13, p.A17)
2013 Dec 12, In NYC Devyani Khobragade, India's deputy consul general, was arrested and strip searched for allegedly underpaying her nanny and committing visa fraud to get her into the United States.
(SFC, 12/18/13, p.A8)
2013 Dec 12, World stock markets extended losses after an apparent budget deal in the US Congress reinforced expectations the Federal Reserve will cut its monetary stimulus as early as next week.
(AP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, In Afghanistan a large bomb accidentally exploded inside a weapons depot in downtown Kabul, but no one was hurt.
(AP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, Australia's top court struck down gay marriage in the nation's capital, ruling that parliament must decide on same-sex unions.
(AFP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, Bangladesh's Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution of Abdul Quader Molla, an opposition leader convicted of war crimes, rejecting a last-minute appeal in a case that threatens to spark fresh violence ahead of national elections next month. Abdul Quader Molla was sent to the gallows at a prison in Dhaka late today.
(AP, 12/12/13)(AFP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 12, Britain’s Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), the body which sets MPs' pay, recommended an 11 percent pay rise despite a public outcry and PM David Cameron plus other top politicians rejecting the plan.
(AFP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, In the Central African Republic 27 Muslims were killed by so-called self-defense militias, known as anti-Balaka, in the western village of Bohong. Fighting and sectarian violence has killed 450 people in Bangui and 160 elsewhere in the country in the past week alone.
(AFP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 12, Congo and the so-called M23 rebels signed a peace agreement that will see the insurgent group demobilize its fighters and transform itself into a political party.
(AP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 12, India's ruling party slammed the Supreme Court for reinstating a ban on gay sex, taking an unexpectedly bold stance ahead of elections in the religiously conservative nation.
(Reuters, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, A senior Iranian nuclear negotiator said new sanctions by the US on Iranian companies and individuals violate the spirit of a deal made between Tehran and the West over its nuclear program.
(AP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 12, Iraq signed a $1.1 billion deal to buy 24 multi-role light fighters from South Korea. Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) said it would deliver the T-50IQ, a variant of its T-50 supersonic aircraft, to Baghdad between 2015 and 2016.
(AFP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, In Italy grass roots protests dubbed the Pitchfork Protests continued for a 4th day in cities and towns reflecting the pain of a continuing recession.
(SFC, 12/13/13, p.A2)
2013 Dec 12, Mexico's Congress overwhelmingly voted to open up the country's oil and gas sector to private investment in the biggest overhaul of the industry since it was nationalized in 1938.
(AP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 12, In North Korea Jang Song Thaek (67), the uncle of leader Kim Jong Un, was tried for treason by a special military tribunal and executed. State media accused Jang of destroying the economy for his personal benefit and blamed him for masterminding the 2009 currency revaluation that sparked rare protests in North Korea.
(AP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin used his state-of-the-nation address to defend conservative values, referring obliquely to his government's anti-gay stance as he chided the West for treating "good and evil" equally. Putin also made a new attempt to woo Ukraine after the EU and US stepped up efforts to pull Kiev out of its former Soviet master's orbit. He also announced a set of initiatives to crack down on Russian companies who register and pay taxes in offshore jurisdictions.
(AP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti, the highest religious authority in the birthplace of Islam, condemned suicide bombings as grave crimes, reiterating his stance in unusually strong language in the Saudi-owned Al Hayat newspaper.
(Reuters, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, In Spain separatist parties in the northeastern Catalonia region agreed the wording of an independence referendum on November 9, 2014, but the Spanish government said the vote was illegal and would not happen.
(Reuters, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, Syria's Western-backed opposition said it had invited Islamist fighters to secure its depots on the Turkish frontier after an attack by al Qaeda militants. Islamist rebels killed at least 15 civilians from the minority Alawite and Druze sects in the central Syrian city of Adra over the last 48 hours.
(Reuters, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, In Thailand protesters cut off electricity to the prime minister's office compound and demanded that police abandon the premises, piling fresh pressure on Thailand's government in a political crisis that has dragged on for weeks.
(AP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, Pope Francis said in the first peace message of his pontificate that huge salaries and bonuses are symptoms of an economy based on greed and inequality and called again for nations to narrow the wealth gap.
(Reuters, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, In Yemen a drone strike on a wedding convoy in Radda killed 17 people, mostly civilians. Two of the dead, Saleh al-Tays and Abdullah al-Tays, had figured in the past on Yemeni government lists of wanted Al-Qaeda suspects. On Feb 20, 2014, a Human Rights Watch report listed the names and ages of 12 men who witnesses said were killed by four Hellfire missiles.
(AFP, 12/13/13)(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Dec 12, American politicians agreed to supply weapons to Ukrainian troops.
(Econ, 12/20/14, p.111)
2014 Dec 12, A major storm that pummeled northern California and the Pacific Northwest with heavy rain and high winds and killed two people moved south overnight, prompting evacuation orders in areas prone to floods and mud flows.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, In New Jersey Derish Wolff (79), the former president and CEO of the Morristown-based Louis Berger Group, an engineering consulting firm, pleaded guilty to leading a conspiracy that reaped tens of millions of dollars by overcharging the US government for reconstruction projects overseas, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(AP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, In Afghanistan the Taliban detonated a roadside bomb, hitting a convoy of foreign troops and killing 2 American soldiers.
(Reuters, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, In Britain a system failure affecting air traffic control workstations was to blame for disruption to thousands of passengers coming in and out of Britain's biggest airports.
(Reuters, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, China opened a key section of a massive and ambitious plan to transport water from wetter central and southern parts of the country up to its arid north, including Beijing.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, EU governments agreed to ban the export of jet fuel to Syria from Dec 14, saying it was being used by the Syrian air force for indiscriminate attacks against civilians.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, Haiti’s President Michel Martelly said that he accepted all the findings of a report this week from a government-appointed commission, including its recommendation that the prime minister resign.
(AP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, Iran said it had agreed to extend temporary visas for 450,000 Afghan refugees for six months, lifting a threat to send them back home to a country facing attacks by resurgent militants.
(Reuters, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, In Iraq one person was killed by rocket fire in Kerbala where huge crowds of Shi'ite pilgrims have gathered for religious ceremonies. Mortar fire targeting a Shiite mosque killed 8 worshippers in Muqdadiyah.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)(AP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, Islamic State group militants shot down an Iraqi military helicopter, killing the two pilots onboard and raising fresh concerns about the extremists' ability to attack aircraft amid ongoing US-led coalition airstrikes.
(AP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, Striking Italian union workers marched through more than 50 Italian cities to protest government economic reforms that they say erode their rights.
(AP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, In Israel some 100 Palestinians demonstrated outside the Ofer military prison near Ramallah. Troops shot live bullets at their legs, wounding 10. In Hebron youths clashed with soldiers and were also shot in the legs. A Palestinian described as mentally unstable threw acid at a family of Israelis who gave him a ride in the West Bank before being shot and wounded.
(AFP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, A Saudi woman arrested for attending a soccer game at Jiddah’s new al-Jawhara stadium.
(AP, 12/15/14)
2014 Dec 12, Sierra Leone said it was banning any public Christmas celebrations as the spiraling caseload of Ebola infections continues to spread alarm.
(AFP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, A Sri Lankan air force plane crashed outside the island's capital, killing four and injuring one.
(AP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the UN Security Council that she has suspended investigations into alleged war crimes in Sudan's Darfur, criticizing the UN Security Council for inaction over the conflict-hit region.
(AFP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, Syrian rebels using improvised mortar bombs made of cooking gas canisters killed 311 civilians between July and December this year according to The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, In Syria the Islamic State group's police force beheaded four men in the central province of Homs for blasphemy.
(AP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, The US and its allies carried out 7 airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and 20 in Iraq in the past three days.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan signaled a fresh campaign against supporters of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)
2015 Dec 12, The Golden State Warriors lost to the Milwaukee Bucks 108-95 ending a 24-game winning streak for the Warriors.
(SSFC, 12/13/15, p.B1)
2015 Dec 12, In western Argentina at least 2 people were killed when a helicopter being used by film crew with the American television channel MTV crashed into a lake.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, Burundi residents awoke to find at least 39 dead bodies scattered in the streets of Bujumbura, a day after coordinated armed assaults on three military installations. 87 people were killed in an escalation of the violence surrounding the disputed third term of President Pierre Nkurunziza.
(AFP, 12/12/15)(AP, 12/13/15)
2015 Dec 12, China’s state media reported that the government will loosen some restrictions on the free movement of workers within the country, long stymied by registration papers that limit access to critical social services.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, In Egypt a Cairo court convicted two officers for the torture and murder of a detained lawyer in an eastern Cairo slum. National security officers Omar Mahmoud and Mohamed el-Anwar were sentenced in absentia to five years in prison each for beating lawyer Karim Hamdi to death last February.
(http://tinyurl.com/zrpejuw)(AP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius presented a landmark global climate accord. The 31-page draft text creates a system for ensuring countries make good on voluntary domestic efforts to curb emissions, and provides billions more dollars to help poor nations cope with the transition to a greener economy.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, In Germany riots started this evening started after hundreds of leftwing activists demonstrated against a rally by far-right protesters in Leipzig earlier in the day. 69 officers have been injured and some 50 police cars were damaged.
(AP, 12/13/15)
2015 Dec 12, In Germany Ivory Coast footballer Steve Gohouri (34) went missing. His body found in the Rhine river on New Year's Eve in the city of Krefeld. Gohouri was playing this season for German fourth-tier side TSV Steinbach.
(AP, 1/2/16)
2015 Dec 12, India and Japan signed agreements in New Delhi that could pave the way for Tokyo to supply New Delhi with military aircraft and high-speed trains, as PM Shinzo Abe promised to fully support India's efforts to become an economic powerhouse.
(AP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, Thousands of Iraqis protested against Ankara's deployment of troops to a base near the northern city of Mosul.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, In Iraq at least 6 border guards were killed when a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into an outpost near the border with Saudi Arabia in an attack claimed by Islamic State.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, Mozambique said the United States will grant it $1.2 billion in aid to fund projects in healthcare, food production and education under a five-year agreement signed this week.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, In northern Nigeria soldiers besieging the home of Ibraheem Zakzaky, the leader of a Shiite movement accused of trying to assassinate Nigeria's army chief, shot and killed at least 20 people in Zaria.
(AP, 12/13/15)(AP, 12/14/15)
2015 Dec 12, The first high-level talks between North and South Korea since an August agreement to end an armed confrontation across their border ended in Kaesong inconclusively.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)(SFC, 12/12/15, p.A2)
2015 Dec 12, In Poland tens of thousands, angered by an ongoing constitutional conflict, marched in Warsaw. They argued that President Andrzej Duda is breaking the constitution with the steps he is taking concerning the appointment of new judges to the Constitutional Tribunal, the top law arbiter.
(AP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, Russian police detained dozens of opposition activists who tried to hold a demonstration in central Moscow on Constitution Day.
(AP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, In Russia a fire swept through a home for people with mental illnesses, killing 23 patients and injuring another 23, many of whom were on medication or otherwise unable to walk in Alferovka, a village in the Voronezh region.
(AP, 12/13/15)
2015 Dec 12, Saudi women voted for the first time, in a tentative step towards easing sex discrimination in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom. Women were also allowed for the first time to stand as candidates in the polls for municipal councils, the country's only elected public chambers. Saudi Arabians voted 17 women into public office in municipal elections.
(AFP, 12/12/15)(Reuters, 12/13/15)
2015 Dec 12, Spanish police arrested Hector Albeidis Arboleda Buitrago, a suspected former combatant in the Colombian rebel force FARC, who they say carried out more than 500 forced abortions on female guerrillas.
(AP, 12/13/15)
2015 Dec 12, In Syria a powerful car bomb exploded near a hospital in the central city of Homs, killing 16 people and wounding dozens. Most residents belong to the same Alawite sect as Pres. Assad.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, Yemeni officials said a seven-day ceasefire will start Dec 14, the day before planned UN-sponsored peace talks in Switzerland. In southern Yemen 9 rebels and 4 pro-government fighters were killed in clashes late today.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)(AFP, 12/13/15)
2016 Dec 12, The US government sanctioned two senior Democratic Republic of Congo officials for human rights violations and targeting the opposition, a week before the president's mandate is set to end. The US Treasury announced it was targeting Deputy PM Evariste Boshab, also the nation's interior and security minister, and Kalev Mutondo, head of the national intelligence agency.
(AFP, 12/12/16)(Econ, 12/24/16, p.74)
2016 Dec 12, The US Supreme Court upheld the broad reach of a federal law prohibiting bank fraud, a ruling that gives the government more leeway to prosecute financial crimes. The unanimous came in the case of a California man who illegally siphoned about $307,000 out of a Taiwanese businessman's Bank of America bank account.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, In Castro Valley, Ca. Andrea St. John (59) was stabbed to death and her home set on fire following a robbery. On May 2 Luckie Dacany (36) of Stockton confessed to her killing while under custody for stealing a vehicle and alleged child molestation.
(SFC, 5/9/17, p.C2)
2016 Dec 12, FlightAware said 190 US flights were canceled today after 1,800 were grounded a day earlier, mostly at Chicago's two main airports.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, In New Jersey Adele Dunlap, the oldest person in America, turned 114.
(SFC, 12/14/16, p.A5)
2016 Dec 12, In Tennessee an early morning fire killed 4 children in Springfield.
(SFC, 12/13/16, p.A5)
2016 Dec 12, British PM Theresa May introduced an official definition for anti-Semitism in hopes of curbing attacks against Jewish people. The definition states that "Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Britain jailed Mohammed Ali Ahmed (27) and Zakaria Boufassil (26) for up to eight years for giving money to Brussels and Paris terror attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini when he visited Britain last year.
(AFP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, British and Greek authorities said they have dismantled an international ring suspected of smuggling hundreds of migrants to Britain and other European countries using falsified travel documents. 24 suspects were arrested last week in the Athens area, and another nine in Glasgow, Northampton and Manchester in Britain.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, A London judge sentenced Stefano Brizzi, a crystal meth addict, to life in prison with at least 24 years to serve for killing police officer Gordon Semple (59) during a bondage sex session and then attempting to cook and eat his body parts. Semple was last seen on 1 April and his dissolving body was found in an acid bath.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, China expressed "serious concern" after US President-elect Donald Trump said the United States did not necessarily have to stick to its long-held stance that Taiwan is part of "one China", calling it the basis for relations.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, In CongoDRC the Union for Peace in Central African Republic (UPC) rebels killed at least 32 civilians in the town of Bakala, where they had been fighting the Popular Front for the Renaissance of Central African Republic (FPRC).
(Reuters, 2/16/17)
2016 Dec 12, It was reported that Google is installing multiple servers in Cuba that will host much of the company's most popular content.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, The European Union imposed sanctions on seven Congolese officials it says illegally suppressed anti-government protests in September, when dozens of demonstrators were killed.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, French police hunted for four men suspected of stealing gold dust worth an estimated 1.5 million euros from an armored truck before setting cars ablaze near a major highway and fleeing.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) said 29 current and former staff of five financial firms, including four banks, have been arrested for alleged bribery related to the disclosure of confidential customer information.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, A cyclone barreled into the southeast coast of India, killing at least four people and bringing down trees and power lines as authorities moved tens of thousands of people from low-lying areas.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Italian energy company Eni said it would sell a 30 percent stake in an offshore Egyptian gas field to Rosneft. The Russian company will pay $1.125 billion for the holding in the Shorouk concession, which contains the giant Zohr gas field, and $450 million to cover past expenditures on the project.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, The International Monetary Fund approved two loans totaling $658.9 million for the Ivory Coast, while welcoming recent economic and financial reforms made by the country.
(AFP, 12/13/16)
2016 Dec 12, In New Zealand PM John Key stepped down. Key, a former currency trader, had lowered income tax rates, trimmed the national debt to 25% of GDP and partially privatized a batch of state utilities. The conservative caucus of Parliament chose Bill English (54) as the next prime minister.
(Econ, 12/10/16, p.42)(SFC, 12/12/16, p.A2)
2016 Dec 12, In Pakistan thousands of Sunni Muslims marking the Prophet Muhammad's birthday attacked a mosque outside Islamabad belonging to the Ahmadi religious minority, wounding several people.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Pres. Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines boasted about having personally killed criminal suspects when he was mayor of Davao City.
(SFC, 12/15/16, p.A3)
2016 Dec 12, Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo said she was determined to lead a campaign against President Rodrigo Duterte's deadly war on drugs and did not believe his assurances there was no plot to oust her.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, The Qatari government vowed that labor law reforms to make it easier for migrant workers to change jobs and leave the country would bring "tangible benefits" and urged patience from critics who say the proposed changes are inadequate.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Police in the Saudi capital said they had arrested a woman for taking off her veil in public and posting pictures of her daring action on Twitter. Several websites identified her as Malak al-Shehri, who triggered a huge backlash on social media after posing without the hijab in a main Riyadh street last month.
(AFP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, A Syrian military official in Aleppo said the "operation in eastern neighborhoods is entering its final phase", as fierce clashes were reported in the few districts still under rebel control.
(AFP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there had been a suspected gas attack in Islamic State-held territory near Palmyra, amid heavy aerial bombardment of the same area which together killed at least 53 people.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Turkey detained over 200 people including dozens of officials from pro-Kurdish parties and struck Kurdish militants in Iraq in response to this weekend's twin bombings claimed by a radical Kurd separatist group.
(AFP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Venezuelans rushed to spend their 100-bolivar notes after President Nicolas Maduro's announcement they will be taken out of circulation to stop the contraband smuggling "mafias" along the Colombian border that he says hoard cash outside the country. An estimated third of Venezuelans have no bank account and keep their savings in the soon-to-be-worthless bills.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2017 Dec 12, Alabama voters elected Democrat Doug Jones in a narrow victory over Judge Roy Moore in a special election for a US Senate seat. The election cut the Republican margin in the US Senate to 51-49
(SFC, 12/13/17, p.A1)
2017 Dec 12, In California the Thomas Fire grew by about 2,500 acres overnight. It has burned 234,200 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, about 100 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, and has destroyed almost 900 structures including more than 690 homes.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, California and Washington state joined five nations (Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia and Chile) on the Pacific coast of the Americas to agree to step up the use of a price on carbon dioxide emissions as a central economic policy to slow climate change.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, San Francisco Mayor Edwin Mah Lee (b.1952), in office since 2011, died of a heart attack early today. Supervisor London Breed (43) became the acting mayor.
(SFC, 12/13/17, p.A1)
2017 Dec 12, Afghan intelligence officials detained one Afghan and three Turkish teachers linked to the Afghan Turk CAG Educational NGO (ATCE), an organization regarded with suspicion by the Turkish government.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, The annual Arctic Report Card released today warned that an increasingly warm Arctic, where temperatures rise twice as fast as the rest of the planet and ice melts at an alarming pace is the "new normal".
(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, In eastern Austria a large explosion rocked the Baumgarten facility, one of Europe's main gas pipeline hubs, leaving one person dead and stoking concerns about the continent's winter supplies.
(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, A Botswana transgender woman won a legal battle against the government to be recognized as female in a landmark victory for the rights of the lesbian, gay and transgender community. The conservative southern African nation of 2 million people has been reluctant to fully acknowledge the rights of the LGBT community.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture launched a program to ensure farmers comply with anti-corruption, environmental and child labor laws, after a highly publicized meatpacking scandal raised doubts about the country's food products.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Official data showed that British inflation has hit its highest level in almost six years, forcing Bank of England governor Mark Carney to explain the rise in an exceptional letter. The Consumer Price Index climbed to 3.1 percent on a 12-month basis in November compared to 3.0 percent in October, overshooting the Bank of England's 2.0-percent target rate by more than one percentage point.
(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling added another magic moment to her list of achievements as Prince William made her a royal Companion of Honor. The title is limited to 65 people "of distinction".
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, In Egypt prominent activist and opposition figure Islam Marei was sentenced to three years over his criticism of the government's decision to transfer control over two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.
(AP, 12/14/17)
2017 Dec 12, The European Union said it has suspended funding for Cambodia's 2018 general election because the vote cannot be credible after the dissolution of the main opposition party.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, French President Emmanuel Macron told dozens of world leaders and company bosses gathered at a climate summit in Paris that "we are losing the battle" against climate change. Major banks and companies vowed to accelerate the move away from Earth-warming fossil fuels as world leaders met in Paris seeking to unlock new cash for the global economy's shift to greener energy.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, It was reported that the owner of Westfield shopping centers is being bought by French property investor Unibail-Rodamco for $15.7 billion. Westfield, which started off in Sydney in the 1950s, is known for its 35 upscale shopping centers in major metropolitan areas, particularly in the US and Britain.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, German lawmakers extended the military's participation in missions against the Islamic State group and in Afghanistan, Mali and Iraq until the spring of 2018.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Germany's KBA automotive watchdog announced a recall of Volkswagen's flagship European sport-utility vehicles (SUV) with 3-litre diesel engines after detecting two illicit emissions control devices in the models.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, In Israel Rabbi Aaron Yehuda Leib Shteinman (b.1913), considered the leading spiritual authority for ultra-Orthodox Judaism, died. Hundreds of thousands attended his funeral ceremonies.
(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Nigeria's court of appeal dismissed 15 charges against Senate president Bukola Saraki related to alleged false declarations of assets, but it upheld three other charges against him.
(Reuters, 12/13/17)
2017 Dec 12, A Nigerian official said two teenage girl suicide bombers attacked the town of Gwoza, Borno state. One girl was shot dead and the other detonated herself killing four others.
(SFC, 12/13/17, p.A2)
2017 Dec 12, Two members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group were killed in an explosion in the Gaza Strip. The group said the men had mishandled explosives.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Puntland army Colonel Osman Abshir Omar, who also headed the region's bomb disposal unit, was killed after a roadside bomb he was defusing exploded.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Russia suspended its diplomatic presence in Yemen and all its staff left the country due to the situation in the capital Sanaa. Russia’s foreign ministry said some diplomatic staff will be working temporarily out of the Saudi capital Riyadh. The Russian defense ministry has said 41 of its troops have died in Syria. The St. Petersburg-based website Fontanka has said 73 private contractors have been killed fighting in Syria.
(AP, 12/12/17)(SFC, 12/13/17, p.A3)
2017 Dec 12, Saudi Arabia detained Sabih al-Masri, Jordan's most influential businessman and the chairman of its largest lender Arab Bank, for questioning after a business trip to Riyadh.
(Reuters, 12/16/17)
2017 Dec 12, Singapore launched an electric car-sharing service, the latest transport innovation aimed at encouraging people away from owning vehicles and keeping gridlock at bay in the space-starved city-state.
(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, In Somalia a US drone strike hit a vehicle carrying explosives some 40 miles southwest of Mogadishu.
(SFC, 12/13/17, p.A2)
2017 Dec 12, A South Sudan lawmaker said more than 170 people have been killed in fighting between rival cattle herders in central South Sudan in the past week.
(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Yemeni security forces killed at least three suspected militants in a raid early today in the southern port city of Aden. A gunmen shot and killed a Muslim cleric in front of his home in Aden, the seventh killing of a cleric in the past three months.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2018 Dec 12, Michael Cohen (52), Donald Trump's former devoted lawyer and fizer, was sentenced to three years in prison, for lying about business deals related to dt, for lying about business deals related to Donald Trump.
(SFC, 12/13/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 12, The New York Times reported that US investigators believe that Chinese intelligence was behind the massive hack of data on some 500 million guests of hotel giant Marriott.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, The Wall Street Journal reported that a revised plan would play down China's bid to dominate manufacturing, and allow more outside competition.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Texas three police officers were wounded while serving a family violence warrant in Houston. Suspect Daniel Trevino was found dead hours later of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
(SFC, 12/13/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 12, Afghan provincial officials said government forces have abandoned the Shebkoh district of Farah province, leaving the area to Taliban insurgents after the government failed to resupply dozens of troops stationed there.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Antarctica two technicians performing maintenance at the US research McMurdo Station died while working on a building that houses a generator for a nearby radio transmitter.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Argentina's foreign minister said his crisis-ridden country desperately needed international investment, as he began a two-day visit to one of the world's richest nations, Qatar.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, British Conservative lawmakers forced a no-confidence vote in PM Theresa May, throwing UK politics deeper into crisis and Brexit further into doubt. May won the vote after promising lawmakers privately that she would quit before Britain's next national election, which is scheduled for 2022.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, China's police confirmed they have arrested award-winning photographer Lu Guang, who went missing in November while travelling in Xinjiang.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, In CongoDRC police fired teargas and live bullets for a second day to disperse supporters of opposition presidential candidate Martin Fayulu, killing three people in the town of Kalemie in the southeastern Katanga region.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)(AFP, 12/12/18)(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, Egypt released blogger and journalist Wael Abbas, known for standing up against police violence, after nearly seven months in detention. Abbas has been posting about police violence, torture and corruption on social media for more than a decade.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Egypt Coptic father Imad Kamal Sadeq (49) and his son, David (21), were killed at a construction site by a security police officer in Minya province.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, Eight European Union nations (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom) underlined their commitment to the Iran nuclear deal while urging Tehran to stop its "destabilizing regional activities" especially the launch of ballistic missiles.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In France a cousin of jailed Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov accepted the European Parliament's Sakharov human rights prize on his behalf, saying the director remained committed to winning the release of all "political prisoners" in Russia.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, A top French appeals court overturned the suspended prison terms handed to activists Cedric Herrou and Pierre-Alain Mannoni for helping migrants who entered the country illegally. The Cour de Cassation, France's court of final appeal, sent the case back to the Lyon appeals' court, which is expected to void the case.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, France arrested Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, a member of Africa's top footballing body, on war crimes charges in the Central African Republic.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Hungary rare scenes of chaos gripped the parliament as it passed a controversial judicial reform, as well as labor legislation that critics call a "slave law".
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Hungary passed a law to set up courts overseen directly by the justice minister, a move critics said would allow political interference in judicial matters and further undermine the rule of law.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In India Isha Ambani, the Ivy League-educated daughter of industrialist Mukesh Ambani, thought to be India's richest man, married Anand Piramal, whose father is industrialist Ajay Piramal, thought to be worth $10 billion.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Iran social media activist Vahid Sayyadi Nasiri, on hunger strike since October 13, 2018 to protest the denial of his right to counsel and inhumane prison conditions, died at the Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Qom.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Baghdad Nobel laureate and former jihadist captive Nadia Murad (25) called on Iraq to create a special team to investigate the fate of other members of her Yazidi minority kidnapped by the Islamic State group.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Israeli forces late today killed Salah Barghouti, a Palestinian suspect wanted in the drive-by shooting on Dec. 9 at a West Bank bus stop.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte told the European Commission he was lowering next year's target to 2.04 percent of gross domestic product from 2.4 percent to avoid disciplinary action by Brussels.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, In northeastern Mali several dozen civilians were shot dead by gunmen who raided an area near the border with Niger. Jihadists on motorcycles killed at least 42 people in a series of attacks on their nomadic camps over the last 24 hours in the eastern Menaka region.
(AFP, 12/13/18)(SFC, 12/14/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 12, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador signed an initiative that would cancel the controversial education reforms of his predecessor.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Myanmar several dozen journalists and activists held a rally in Yangon to mark the anniversary of the arrest of two reporters for the Reuters news agency who are among a group of journalists being honored by Time magazine as its "Person of the Year".
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In the Netherlands Sarah Papenheim (21), a native of Minnesota, was fatally stabbed at her home in an apartment building near Erasmus University, where she had been studying since 2016. A suspect (23) was arrested the same day.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 12, Nigerian opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar signed an election peace accord, a day after his absence from the official signing ceremony raised concerns about the conduct of the February 2019 vote.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Dozens of North and South Korean soldiers crossed over the world's most heavily armed border as they inspected the sites of their rival's front-line guard posts to verify they'd been removed.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Hundreds of Gazans attended the funeral of Ahmed Abu Abed, a four-year-old boy who died after being hit by Israeli shrapnel at a border protest last week.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, The Philippine Congress approved a request by the president to extend martial law in the country's volatile south by a year due to continuing threats by Islamic State group-linked militants and communist insurgents.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Romania dozens of people protested against poor air quality in Bucharest, which recently was ranked one of Europe's most traffic-congested cities.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Saudi Arabia representatives from Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Jordan gathered in Riyadh to discuss an alliance of the six countries bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. No final agreement was reached.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Slovak Defense Minister Peter Gajdos signed the contract to buy 14 F-16 military jets from Lockheed Martin as it seeks to replace Soviet-era jets.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Sri Lanka's former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe won a confidence vote in Parliament receiving 117 votes in favor in the 225-member legislative body. His October sacking by President Maithripala Sirisena precipitated a political crisis.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Sweden said it was freezing its support to UNAIDS until executive director Michel Sidibe is removed. An expert report has blasted the agency's leadership for systematically failing to address bullying, abuse and sexual harassment.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Thailand a local policeman was arrested for allegedly shooting and killing Malik Djamel, a French man, at a shopping plaza in Bangkok. Police said Senior Sgt.-Maj. Kantapong Huadsri had confessed to killing the man over an argument involving a woman, but that the dispute was not a love triangle.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, The Vatican said Pope Francis has removed from his group of close advisers two cardinals hit by sexual abuse scandals, including his economy minister, Australian George Pell (77). The other member removed from the so called C-9 is Francisco Javier Errázuriz (85) of Chile.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Sources said Yemen's warring parties agreed to reopen Sanaa airport in the Houthi-held capital, as Western nations pressed the two sides to accept confidence-building steps before the end of UN-led peace talks in Sweden.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2019 Dec 12, US President Donald Trump said on the United States was "very close" to nailing down a trade deal with China.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, The US Senate voted unanimously on a resolution that recognizes as genocide the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks a century ago. The following day Turkey summoned the ambassador from the US to protest the approval.
(AP, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, The US Department of Justice announced charges against 10 former NFL players over an alleged scheme to defraud millions of dollars from the league's health care benefits program.
(ABC News, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, Officials with Homeland Security Investigations announced the seizure of $250 million from convicted ex-Venezuelan national treasurer Alejandro Andrade, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for his central role in a $1 billion money-laundering scheme that allowed him to hide a fortune in overseas banks as well as luxury real estate in South Florida.
(Miami Herald, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, The Trump administration gave the go-ahead to new oil-drilling leases on federal land in 8 California counties, mostly in the Bakersfield area.
(SFC, 12/13/19, p.C1)
2019 Dec 12, San Francisco police displayed some $2.5 million in stolen property following their recovery after 30 search warrants were served this week.
(SFC, 12/13/19, p.A12)
2019 Dec 12, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) signed an executive order to restore voting rights to more than 400,000 nonviolent offenders who completed their sentences. Over the last few weeks the governor has issued 428 pardons, with his list including a woman who threw her newborn in the trash, a convicted child rapist, and a man who murdered his parents when he was a teenager. Bevin was defeated last month by Democrat Andy Beshear.
(AP, 12/13/19)(SFC, 12/13/19, p.A8)
2019 Dec 12, Louisiana sued the state of California over its decision to ban the import and sale of alligator products, saying the ban will hurt an important Louisiana industry and ultimately could hurt the state's wetlands. California banned alligator skins and meats in the 1970s but repeatedly issued exceptions that allowed sales. The most recent exemption expires on Jan. 1 of next year, and this time California's legislature did not pass another exemption.
(AP, 12/14/19)
2019 Dec 12, Danny Aiello (b.1933), American film and stage actor, died in New Jersey. His films included: "Bang the Drum Slowly" (1973),"The Front" (1976), "Fort Apache: The Bronx" (1981), "The Purple Rose of Cairo" (1984), "Once Upon a Time in America" (1984), "Moonstruck" (1987), "Radio Days" (1987), "Do the Right Thing" (1989).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Aiello)(SSFC, 12/15/19, p.A11)
2019 Dec 12, New US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette slammed New York state regulators for blocking pipelines that would bring natural gas from Appalachia to New England, but did not specify whether the Trump administration could do anything to push the projects forward.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, In Texas Heidi Broussard and her baby, Margot Carey, went missing in Austin. On Dec 19 her body was found in the trunk of a vehicle at a home in the Houston area. The infant daughter was found safe. Broussard's close friend Magen Fieramusca was soon arrested and charged with two counts of kidnapping and one count of tampering with a corpse.
(CBS News, 12/20/19)(CBS News, 12/23/19)(SFC, 12/25/19, p.A5)
2019 Dec 12, A Utah judge ruled that people born in the the territory of American Samoa should be recognized as US citizens.
(SFC, 12/14/19, p.A5)
2019 Dec 12, CVS Health Corp said it will make it easier for patients with advanced cancer enrolled in some Aetna insurance plans to receive broad genetic gene sequencing tests that can help identify the best drug or treatment for them.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, In Algeria thousands of people took to the streets in Algiers and other cities chanting "No vote! We want freedom!" as authorities held a presidential election that protesters view as a charade to keep the ruling elite in power. All five candidates that won approval to stand are former senior officials.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Argentine Foreign Minister Felipe Sola said Bolivian ex-president Evo Morales has arrived in Argentina where he will be granted refugee status.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Britain voted in a deeply divisive election that posed a historic choice between an imminent split from the EU or another referendum that could scrap the entire Brexit process. PM Boris Johnson's Conservative Party won a resounding victory that all but seals a divorce from the EU bloc. The Scottish National Party took back most of the districts it lost two years ago. Such a dramatic outcome, winning 48 of the 59 seats available in Scotland, will galvanize the party in its pursuit of the independence referendum leader Nicola Sturgeon.
(AP, 12/12/19)(AFP, 12/13/19)(Bloomberg, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, Costa Rica's President Carlos Alvarado issued a technical decree that will allow for therapeutic abortions in the Central American nation, despite opposition from religious and conservative political groups.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, The European Parliament told EU leaders that Malta's PM Joseph Muscat should resign immediately to avoid risks of political interference with the investigation into the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Germany pushed back on President Donald Trump’s moves to impose sanctions on the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, with Angela Merkel’s top diplomat rejecting outside meddling.
(Bloomberg, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, In India violent mobs in the northeastern state of Assam torched buildings and clashed with police, leaving two dead and 11 with bullet wounds, as protests grew over a new citizenship law for non-Muslim minorities from some neighboring countries. Protesters in Assam, which shares a border with Bangladesh, say the measure would open the region to a flood of foreign migrants. Tens of thousands rioted in three northeastern states. Authorities in Assam state shut down the internet and imposed a curfew. Neighboring Meghalaya state banned groups of more than four people from assembling.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)(SFC, 12/13/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 12, In Iraq an angry mob killed a 16-year-old and strung up the corpse by its feet from a traffic pole after the teen shot and killed six people, including four anti-government protesters.
(The Telegraph, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Italian police said they had arrested 13 people and dismantled an international crime gang that smuggled small groups of migrants from Greece to Italy aboard yachts.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Latvia's parliament passed legislation to take control over the Baltic country's two biggest ports in an effort to keep them open after US sanctions against a Latvian oligarch threatened operations.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Libyan authorities re-opened the capital's main airport, after closing it nearly three months ago amid heavy fighting between rival militias.
(AP, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Gen. Khalifa Hifter of the self-styled Libyan National Army declared a final, “decisive battle" to take Tripoli from PM Fayez Sarraj's UN-supported government. "The zero hour has ticked," Hifter said in a televised speech.
(AP, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, At The Hague lawyers seeking to halt what they allege is ongoing genocide in Myanmar slammed leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s defense of her country’s armed forces, saying that the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former pro-democracy icon chose to ignore “unspeakable" crimes targeting Muslim civilians.
(AP, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for an attack on a military camp in Niger that killed at least 71 soldiers earlier this week.
(AP, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, North Korea said the United States had nothing to offer it in possible renewed talks aimed at getting Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and missile programs after Washington said it was ready to take "concrete steps" towards securing a deal.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Russia expelled two German diplomats in what it called a standard diplomatic response to a similar move by Germany last week and said it hoped a dispute over the killing of a Georgian citizen in Berlin would not damage ties further.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, A fire on Russia Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier broke out during welding work at a shipyard in the Arctic port of Murmansk and spread quickly through the carrier's internal compartments. Two crew members were killed and 11 others injured.
(AP, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, In Saudi Arabia a fire broke out at a prison in Riyadh. Three inmates were killed and 21 others injured 21.
(AP, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, In Spain Carolina Schmidt, the Chilean president of UN climate talks in Madrid, told governments there could be no excuses for not reaching an agreement as the talks entered their final stretch.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Syrian officials and experts said more than 1,000 ancient relics and mosaics were saved from Islamic State group militants when staff at the museum of the city of Raqqa managed to hide them underground and in storehouses. Hundreds of other pieces that were hidden in Raqqa's branch of the central bank were discovered and stolen by militants.
(AP, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, The body-folding, sharp-elbowed techniques of Thai massage was added to UNESCO's prestigious heritage list.
(AFP, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Turkey sent its accord with Libya on a maritime boundary between the two countries to the United Nations for approval, despite objections from Greece that the agreement violates international law.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Former Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu established a new political party, Future Party, in a move that represents a challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party.
(AP, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Ukrainian lawmakers extended a law offering special status to separatist-controlled regions in eastern Ukraine in accordance with agreements brokered by France and Germany.
(AP, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, The United Nations warned that famine threatens the lives of up to 5.5 million people in South Sudan, where droughts and flooding have destroyed crops and livestock, compounding "intense political instability".
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2020 Dec 12, Thousands of President Trump’s supporters marched in Washington and several state capitals to protest what they contended, against all evidence, was a stolen election. Four people were stabbed in DC, and the police declared a riot in Olympia, Wash., where one person was shot. Vandalism targeted two historic Black churches during clashes between supporters of President Trump and counter protesters.
(NY Times, 12/13/20)(The Week, 12/14/20)
2020 Dec 12, President Donald Trump lost his latest legal challenge seeking to overturn Georgia's election results, with the state Supreme Court's rejection late today of a case from Trump's campaign and Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer.
(AP, 12/13/20)
2020 Dec 12, US President-elect Joe Biden pledged to rejoin the Paris climate accord on the first day of his presidency, as world leaders staged a virtual gathering to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the international pact aimed at curbing global warming.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it had approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine by pilots and air traffic controllers.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, It was reported that Oracle Corp., based in Redwood City, Ca., is moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas.
(SFC, 12/12/20, p.A1)
2020 Dec 12, California to date had 1,486,873 cases of coronavirus and 20,857 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 187,086 cases and 2,102 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 16,045,596 with the death toll at 297,789.
(sfist.com, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Ann Reinking (b.1949), Broadway star and Tony-award winning choreographer, died in Seattle. She was known as the star of such musicals as: "Sweet Charity" and "Chicago."
(SFC, 12/16/20, p.A5)
2020 Dec 12, A Virgin Galactic test flight ended prematurely as the spacecraft's rocket motor failed to ignite and it then glided down safely to its landing site in southern New Mexico.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Vanderbilt kicker Sarah Fuller made history again, when she knocked through an extra point during the Commodores' SEC matchup with in-state rival Tennessee. Last month, Fuller became the first woman to play in a Power Five game when she took the second half kick off against Missouri.
(The Week, 12/13/20)
2020 Dec 12, Charley Pride, described as "the first Black superstar in country music," died due to complications from COVID-19 in Dallas, Texas.
(The Week, 12/13/20)
2020 Dec 12, In Afghanistan an alleged airstrike late today killed around a dozen civilians in southern Kandahar province. The government later insisted that seven civilians were killed when the Taliban detonated a bomb in the area.
(AP, 12/14/20)
2020 Dec 12, In Albania demonstrators in the northern city of Shkodra damaged the left-wing governing Socialist Party's offices and injured a police officer, as part of ongoing protests this week after a fatal shooting by police enforcing a coronavirus curfew.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Austrian officials said authorities in recent days have seized a large cache of weapons and ammunition that were intended to be sold to far-right extremists in Germany. The seizure included 70 automatic and semi-automatic firearms, more than 100,000 rounds of ammunition and explosives.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, The Brazilian government unveiled its long-awaited national vaccination plan against COVID-19 with an initial goal of vaccinating 51 million people, or about one-fourth of the population, in the first half of 2021.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Britain's AstraZeneca said it has agreed to buy US drugmaker Alexion Pharmaceuticals for $39 billion in its largest ever deal, diversifying away from its fast-growing cancer business in a bet on rare-disease and immunology drugs.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, John le Carré (89), the best-selling British author of Cold War spy thrillers, including “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," died in Cornwall, England. Graham Greene described le Carré's best-selling novel “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" (1963), “the best spy story I have ever read.
(NY Times, 12/13/20)(Econ., 12/19/20, p.126)
2020 Dec 12, China pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by "at least" 65 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030, raising the target slightly from the country's previous goal of "up to" 65 per cent.
(South China Morning Post, 12/13/20)
2020 Dec 12, An Egyptian court sentenced nine police officers to three years in prison after their conviction for beating to death street vendor Magdy Maken (53) in November, 2016, at a Cairo police station. The verdict can be appealed before a higher court.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, In France police in Paris took 142 people into custody at what quickly became a tense and sometimes ill-tempered protest against proposed security laws, with officers wading into the crowds of several thousand to haul away suspected trouble-makers.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Indonesian police said they have arrested Aris Sumarsono, aka Zulkarnaen, on Sumatra island. He is believed to be the military leader of the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah network and has eluded capture since 2003.
(SSFC, 12/13/20, p.A6)
2020 Dec 12, Indonesia said US automaker Tesla will send delegations to Indonesia next month to discuss potential investment in a supply chain for its electric vehicles.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Iran executed Ruhollah Zam (47), a once-exiled journalist, over his online work that helped inspire nationwide economic protests in 2017, just months after he returned to Tehran under mysterious circumstances.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 12, Italy reported 649 new coronavirus-related deaths compared with 761 the day before. The daily tally of new infections was 19,903, up from 18,727.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Japan saw more than 3,000 new infections of the novel coronavirus for the first time in one day, as the number of cases continues to rise in the winter.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Mexico City's government said shops in the center of the capital and other busy areas would temporarily have to close at 5 p.m. to reduce the risk of coronavirus infection as authorities battle a surge in cases.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, A Russian nuclear submarine successfully test-fired four intercontinental ballistic missiles in a show of readiness of Moscow's nuclear forces amid tension with the US.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, In South Korea protests erupted as sex offender Cho Doo-soon (69) was released from prison at the end of his sentence for raping and seriously injuring a young girl in 2008, a crime which caused revulsion across the country.
(The Telegraph, 12/13/20)
2020 Dec 12, South Korea reported a record 950 daily coronavirus cases, exceeding the late February peak of 909, with the president calling the country's third wave of COVID-19 an "emergency".
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, South Korea's agriculture ministry issued a temporary nationwide standstill order for poultry farms and related transport in a bid to contain a wider spread of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, It was reported that Switzerland has frozen the financial assets of the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, following the violent aftermath of the elections in the east European country.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Jack Steinberger (99), who shared a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988 for expanding understanding of the ghostly neutrino, died at his home in Geneva.
(NY Times, 12/16/20)
2020 Dec 12, United Nations' Climate Ambition Summit was held on the fifth anniversary of the international Paris climate. At the virtual gathering UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said world leaders should declare states of "climate emergency" in their countries to spur action to avoid catastrophic global warming.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Pope Francis urged countries to work towards net zero carbon emissions and committed Vatican City - the world's smallest state - to reaching the target by 2050.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Venezuela's opposition, led by Juan Guaido, concluded a "popular consultation" to repudiate President Nicolas Maduro's government after boycotting a Dec. 6 congressional vote. The opposition said just under 6.5 million people participated. The Maduro government has said 5.2 million Venezuelans voted in the election.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, The bodies of 11 migrants, traveling by boat from Venezuela to Trinidad and Tobago, were found at sea. Nine more bodies were found the next day.
(SFC, 12/15/20, p.A4)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
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For Asia History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
1098 Dec 12, The 1st Crusaders captured and plundered Mara, Syria.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1474 Dec 12, Isabella crowned herself queen of Castilia & Aragon.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1531 Dec 12, Legend held that a dark-skinned Virgin Mary appeared to a peasant outside Mexico City and left an imprint on his cactus-fiber poncho. The poncho became an icon for the Virgin of Guadalupe. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, an Indian peasant, had visions of the Virgin Mary. In 2002 Pope John Paul II planned to canonize him. The Vatican’s main source was a religious work that dated to 1666.
(SFC, 2/1/99, p.A9)(WSJ, 2/27/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/17/02, p.A1)(AP, 7/30/02)
1600 Dec 12, John Craig, Scottish church reformer and James VI's court vicar, died.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1685 Dec 12, Lodovico Giustini, composer, was born.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1745 Dec 12, John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was born. He became a diplomat and governor of NY, served as the first Supreme Court Head Justice, and negotiated treaties for the United States
(HN, 12/12/98)(MC, 12/12/01)
1753 Dec 12, George Washington, the adjutant of Virginia, delivered an ultimatum to the French forces at Fort Le Boeuf, south of Lake Erie, reiterating Britain’s claim to the entire Ohio river valley. Washington (22) was sent by Gov. Robert Dinwiddie to warn the French soldiers that they were trespassing on English territory.
(HN, 12/12/98)(WSJ, 2/10/00, p.A16)
1770 Dec 12, The British soldiers responsible for the “Boston Massacre" were acquitted on murder charges.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1777 Dec 12, Rev. Benjamin Russen was hanged at Tyburn, England, for rape.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1787 Dec 12, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1792 Dec 12, In Vienna Ludwig Van Beethoven (22) received 1st lesson in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1799 Dec 12, Two days before his death, George Washington composed his last letter, to Alexander Hamilton, his aide-de-camp during the Revolution and later his Secretary of the Treasury. In the letter he urged Hamilton to work for the establishment of a nationally military academy. Washington wrote that letter at the end of a long, cold day of snow, sleet and rain that he had spent out-of-doors. He remained outside for more than five hours, according to his secretary Tobias Lear, did not change out of his wet clothes or dry his hair when he returned home.
(HNQ, 10/25/02)
1800 Dec 12, Washington DC was established as the capital of US.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1805 Dec 12, Henry Wells, founder of American Express and Wells Fargo, was born.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1821 Dec 12, Gustave Flaubert (d.1880), French novelist, was born. "Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times." [see May 8, 1880]
(V.D.-H.K.p.278)(AP, 6/19/99)(HN, 12/12/99)
1822 Dec 12, Mexico was officially recognized as an independent nation by US.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1833 Dec 12, Matthias Hohner (d.1902), German manufacturer (harmonica), was born.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1849 Dec 12, Marc Brunel (b.1769), the initiating engineer of England’s Thames Tunnel, died.
(ON, 4/06, p.9)(www.bris.ac.uk/is/services/specialcollections/brunelchronology.html)
1855 Dec 12, Jean de Charpentier (b.1786), a German-Swiss geologist, died in Bex, Switzerland.
(ON, 10/08, p.12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_Charpentier)
1862 Dec 12, The Union lost its first ship to a torpedo, the USS Cairo, in the Yazoo River.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1863 Dec 12, Edvard Munch (d.1944), Norwegian artist (The Scream), was born.
(WUD, 1994 p.941)(NH, 6/00, p.20)(HN, 12/12/00)
1863 Dec 12, Orders were given in Richmond that no more supplies from the Union should be received by Federal prisoners.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1868 Dec 12, In Indiana 56 hooded men entered New Albany jail. Frank Reno was the first to be dragged from his cell to be lynched. He was followed by his two brothers, William and Simeon. Another gang member, Charlie Anderson, was also hanged in the prison. [see May 22]
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWvigilantes.htm)
1870 Dec 12, Joseph H. Rainey became the first black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives. Rainey, a Republican from South Carolina, filled the seat made vacant by the expulsion of Representative Benjamin F. Whittemore. Rainey served for 10 years.
(AP, 12/12/97)(MC, 12/12/01)
1875 Dec 12, Karl R.G. von Rundstedt, German general, field marshal (Normandy), was born.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1886 Dec 12, Edward Richard Woodham (b.1831), English survivor of the Charge of the Light Brigade (1854), died.
(AP, 9/29/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Richard_Woodham)
1889 Dec 12, Robert Browning (77), English poet (Ring & Book), died.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1893 Dec 12, Edward G. Robinson, actor famous for gangster roles, was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1897 Dec 12, Lillian Smith, Southern writer and civil rights activist, was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1897 Dec 12, "The Katzenjammer Kids," the pioneering comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks, made its debut in the New York Journal.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1899 Dec 12, George F. Bryant of Boston patented the wooden golf tee.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1901 Dec 12, Italian scientist and engineer Guglielmo Marconi received the first long-distance radio transmission in St. John's, Newfoundland, 2,232 miles. Electrical engineer John Ambrose Fleming transmitted the Morse code signal for "s" from across the Atlantic Ocean in England and Marconi heard it--three short clicks--through a radio speaker. Marconi had begun experimenting with radiotelegraphy around 1895, and he realized that messages could be transmitted over much greater distances by using grounded antennae on the radio transmitter and receiver. A few years after the successful transmission with Fleming, Marconi opened the first commercial wireless telegraph service.
(HNPD, 12/12/98)(MC, 12/12/01)
1906 Dec 12, US Pres. Theodore Roosevelt nominated Oscar Straus to be secretary of commerce and labor; Straus became the first Jewish Cabinet member.
(AP, 12/12/07)
1908 Dec 12, Luis Peraza (d.1974), Venezuelan dramatist, was born.
(www.dramateatro.arts.ve/ensayos/n_0011/milagros_santana_11.html)
1909 Dec 12, Mildred Linton (d.2003) was born in Ottumwa, Iowa. She became a film star in the 1930s under the name Karen Morley.
(SFC, 4/21/03, p.B5)
1911 Dec 12, In northern India Britain’s King George V stood before some 562 princes as well as maharajahs, soldiers and bureaucrats, and made a surprise announcement that would change the fate of Delhi, an ancient fading city with a population of 410,000. The king said Delhi would be the new capital of India.
(AP, 12/11/11)(Econ, 12/17/11, p.68)
1912 Dec 12, Henry Armstrong, American boxer, was born.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1913 Dec 12, Ethiopia’s Emperor Menelik II (b.1844) died. After his death the council of regency continued the rule of Ethiopia. Lij Iyasu had been designated successor of Menelik II by Empress Taytu in May 1909 - however a problem occurred: the imperial Abyssinian rules of succession dictated, that only a Christian could rule Ethiopia as Emperor - and Lij Iyasu had taken the Muslim faith. Therefore Lij Iyasu was never crowned emperor of Ethiopia. In 1916 Empress Zewditu I of Ethiopia succeeded Menelik II, she was his oldest daughter.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menelik_II_of_Ethiopia)
1913 Dec 12 , Authorities in Florence, Italy, announced that the Mona Lisa, stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1911, had been recovered.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1915 Dec 12, Frank Sinatra, actor and singer, was born in Hoboken New Jersey. He died May 14, 1998. In 1986 Kitty Kelly wrote his biography “His Way."
(WSJ, 12/14/95, p.A-12)(SFC, 11/11/96, p.D1)(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C10)(SFC, 5/16/98, p.E7)
1916 Dec 12, Worst train disaster ever took place in Modane, France, 543 French Soldiers were killed.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1917 Dec 12, Father Edward J. Flanagan (31) founded Boys Town outside Omaha, Neb. A half-dozen boys entered to seek a better life. [see Dec 1]
(AP, 12/12/97)(MC, 12/12/01)
1917 Dec 12, In Modane, France, a troop train derailed near the entrance of Mt. Cenis tunnel and 543 people were killed.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)(AP, 2/18/04)
1922 Dec 12, John Wanamaker (b.1938), US merchant who founded a chain of stores in Philadelphia, died. He introduced department stores and price tags to the US and became the first modern advertiser when he bought ads in newspapers to promote his stores.
(http://tinyurl.com/ck74o)(Econ, 7/8/06, p.61)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.15)
1924 Dec 12, Edward I Koch, Mayor-D-NYC, 1977-89, judge on TV’s People's Court, was born in NYC.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1925 Dec 12, Arthur Heinman opened the first motel, the "Motel Inn," in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1927 Dec 12, Robert Norton Noyce, co-inventor of the integrated circuit, was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1927 Dec 12, Communists forces seized Canton, China.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1928 Dec 12, Helen Frankenthaler, abstract painter, was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1929 Dec 12, John Osbourne, playwright and film producer (Look Back in Anger), was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1930 Dec 12, Revolution began in Spain as rebels took a border town.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1930 Dec 12, Last Allied troops left the Saar of Germany.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1931 Dec 12, Under pressure from the Communists in Canton, Chiang Kai-shek resigned as President of the Nanking Government but remained the head of the Nationalist government that held nominal rule over most of China.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1936 Dec 12, Chang Hsueh-liang (d.2001 at 101), a northern military commander (aka Zhang Xueliang), kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek to force him into an alliance to repel Japanese forces. The Xi’an incident coup ended after 2 weeks. The incident led the Nationalists and the Communists to make peace so that the two could form a united front against the increasing threat posed by Japan. Chang was later court-martialed and sentenced to prison. He was taken to Taiwan in 1949 and kept under house arrest.
(SFC, 10/16/01, p.B2)(Econ, 5/9/09, p.86)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi%27an_Incident)
1936 Dec 12, Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek declared war on Japan.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1937 Dec 12, Japanese aircraft sank the U.S. gunboat Panay on China's Yangtze River, during the battle for Nanking in the Sino-Japanese War. Japan later apologized and paid $2.2 mil-lion dollars in reparations.
(AP, 12/12/97)(MC, 12/12/01)
1939 Dec 12, Douglas Fairbanks (56), actor (Zorro, 3 Musketeers, Robin Hood), died.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1941 Dec 12, German occupying army searched house to house in Paris looking for Jews.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1943 Dec 12, The exiled Czech government signed a treaty with the USSR for postwar cooperation.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1943 Dec 12, The German Army launched Operation Winter Tempest, the relief of the Sixth Army trapped in Stalingrad. The attempt to relieve Stalingrad fell short due to stubborn Soviet resistance and the Germans' indecision within the besieged city.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1946 Dec 12, Tide laundry detergent was introduced.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1946 Dec 12, A United Nations committee voted to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a gift by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to be the site of U.N. headquarters.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1947 Dec 12, The United Mine Workers union withdrew from the American Federation of La-bor.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1948 Dec 12, Charles Templeton Crocker (b.1884), multi-millionaire grandson of the Central Pacific (and Southern Pacific) railroad magnate and banker, Charles Crocker (1822-1888), died. He authored "The Cruise of the Zaca" in 1933.
(http://researcharchive.calacademy.org/research/library/special/findaids/Crocker.html)
1948 Dec 12, British soldiers surrounded the Sungai Rimoh rubber estate in Batang Kali, shot 24 Malaysian rubber plantation workers and set the village on fire. In 1970 Britain’s incoming Conservative administration dropped a police investigation, claiming a lack of evidence. In 2012 relatives of killed workers lost their High Court battle for a full inquiry by the British government.
(AFP, 9/4/12)
1949 Dec 12, Saab, a Swedish aircraft maker, began full-scale production of the Saab 92 automobile based on the prototype Saab 92001.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_92)
1953 Dec 12, Chuck Yeager reached Mach 2.43 in Bell X-1A rocket plane.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1955 Dec 12, 1st prototype of hovercraft patented by British engineer Christopher Cockerell.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1956 Dec 12, In Hungary a general strike protested the Kadar Regime and the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that condemned Soviet repression in Hungary, called on the USSR to withdraw its forces, and urged Hungarian independence.
(EWH, 1968, p.1183)(HN, 12/12/98)
1961 Dec 12, Martin Luther King Jr & 700 demonstrators were arrested in Albany, Ga.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1961 Dec 12, Frantz Fanon (b.1925), Martinique-born writer, psychiatrist, and revolutionary died in Washington, DC. His work foretold of Third World liberation struggles. His book “Wretched of the Earth" (1961) celebrated anti-colonial revolutionaries. In 2008 John Edgar Wideman authored his novel “Fanon" based on Fanon’s life.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/fanon.htm)(SSFC, 10/5/03, p.M2)(WSJ, 2/15/08, p.W2) (Econ, 4/17/10, SR p.16)
1963 Dec 12, Frank Sinatra Jr. returned after being kidnapped.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1963 Dec 12, Kenya gained independence from Britain and the Kenyan African National Union Party (KANU) began ruling. Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, was the first president and served until 1978. The Kikuyu and closely related Meru and Embu groups comprised some 28% of Kenya’s people. Kenya’s population at this time was under 8 million. This was later commemorated as Jamhuri Day. Kenya’s first vice president was Oginga Odinga, the father of Raila Odinga.
(SFC, 10/17/96, A8)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(AP,12/12/97)(SFC,12/23/97, p.D4)(SFC, 8/8/98, p.A12)(Econ, 2/28/09, p.87)(Econ, 3/14/09, p.49)(SSFC, 5/25/14, p.P3)(Econ, 8/12/17, p.35)
1964 Dec 12, Kenya formally became a republic. Its population at this time was about 8 million.
(SFC, 9/4/97, p.A10)(HN, 12/12/98)(Econ, 1/26/13, p.45)
1964 Dec 12, Three Buddhist leaders began a hunger strike to protest the government in Saigon.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1967 Dec 12, The U.S. ended the airlift of 6,500 men in Vietnam.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1968 Dec 12, Tallulah Bankhead (b.1903), American actress, died: "The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner." In 2000 Tovah Feldshuh created "Tallulah Hallelujah," a one-woman show in salute to Bankhead.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallulah_Bankhead)(WSJ, 10/11/00, p.A24)(SSFC, 1/14/01, DB p.34)
1971 Dec 12, David Sarnoff (b.1891), US TV pioneer (RCA), died. He was a Russian immigrant who transformed NBC from a radio to a TV network.
(SFC, 8/2/99, p.B3)(www.davidsarnoff.org/ds07.html)
1975 Dec 12, Sara Jane Moore pleaded guilty to a charge of trying to kill President Ford in San Francisco the previous September.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1975 Dec 12, In South Dakota Anna Mae Pictou Aquash (b.1945) was shot to death. Ameri-can Indian Movement (AIM) members suspected her of being an FBI informant. Her body was found on Feb 24, 1976, on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In 2003 Arlo Looking Cloud (50) was convicted in the murder. John Graham, a Canadian, and Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud, a US citizen, were indicted in 2003 in the United States for Aquash's murder. In 2007 a Canadian court ruled that Graham should be extradited to the United States to face trial. In 2011 Graham was sentenced to serve life in prison.
(www.dickshovel.com/time.html#1976)(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A3)(Reuters, 6/26/07)(SFC, 1/25/11, p.A6)
1975 Dec 12, In New Zealand Robert Muldoon (1921-1992) began serving as prime minister and continued to July 26, 1984. His interventionist policies threatened to send the country to the financial wall.
(WSJ, 10/9/96, p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Muldoon)
1976 Dec 12, QB Joe Namath played his last game as a NY Jet. In 2004 Mark Kriegel authored “Namath: A Biography."
(www.newyorkjets.com/history)(SSFC, 9/26/04, p.M3)
1977 Dec 12, Dr. Grethe Rask (b.1930) from Denmark died of Pneumocystis carinii. She had done research in Africa. Her symptoms had been manifesting in Dec 1976 and she was hospitalized in Africa. In November 1977 after a brief recovery, she decided it was time to go home to die. A colleague saw the wasting, and did an autopsy, where P. carinii was found. She is believed to be one of the first documented cases of probable AIDS infection.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grethe_Rask)
1979 Dec 12, In response to the Iran hostage crisis, the Carter administration ordered the removal of most Iranian diplomats in the United States.
(AP, 12/12/99)
1979 Dec 12, Clara Haili (b.1901), Hawaiian singer (aka Hilo Hattie), hula dancer, actress and comedian, died. She had become famous in the late 1930s for her song “When Hilo Hattie Did the Hula Hop."
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.M4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilo_Hattie)
1979 Dec 12, In South Korea Chun Doo Hwan led a military coup.
(SFC, 12/16/96, p.A16)
1980 Dec 12, The US enacted the Bayh-Dole Act. It allowed recipients of government grants to retain title to their inventions. The act made it easier for universities to commercialize their research and helped create the biotechnology industry. It also amended US copyright law to include computer programs.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh-Dole_Act)(Econ, 12/11/04, p.59)(SFC, 6/21/05, p.D1)
1980 Dec 12, Hambrecht & Quist took Apple Corp. public with 4.6 million shares at $22 per share, which closed at $29 per share.
(www.macworld.com/2006/03/features/30timeline/index.php)(SFC, 1/24/04, p.A12)
1981 Dec 12, "Waiting For A Girl Like You" by Foreigner hit #1 on the pop singles chart and stayed there for 3 weeks.
(www.rockonthenet.com/artists-f/foreigner.htm)
1981 Dec 12-1982 Dec 31, In Poland Gen’l. Jaruzelski imposed martial law, effective at mid-night, restricting civil rights and suspending operation of the independent trade union Solidarity in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement. Polish labor leader Lech Walesa was arrested. Martial law formally ended in 1983. Women kept the organization going as most male leaders were arrested. In 2005 Shana Penn authored “Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland.
(Econ, 7/30/05, p.76)(www.videofact.com/english/martial_law.htm)
1982 Dec 12, The Sentry Armored Car Company in NYC was robbed of $11.4 million from its headquarters. It was the biggest cash theft in US history.
(http://tinyurl.com/36gcc9)
1983 Dec 12, Australia’s labor government under Bob Hawke allowed its dollar to float.
(http://intl.econ.cuhk.edu.hk/exchange_rate_regime/index.php?cid=28)(Econ, 5/28/11, SR p.3)
1983 Dec 12, A truck bomb exploded at the US Embassy in Kuwait. Shiite Muslims backed by Iran drove bomb-laden trucks into six targets. The most deadly of these struck the US Embassy, killing five persons and wounding 62. Other trucks destroyed the French embassy and several Kuwaiti installations (www.danielpipes.org/article/173).
(WSJ, 4/28/05, p.A1)
1985 Dec 12, The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, officially the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, provided for automatic spending cuts to take effect if the president and Congress failed to reach established targets.
(http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/bowsher.html)
1985 Dec 12, 248 American soldiers and eight crew members were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1986 Dec 12, Russian Tupolev-134 crashed in East Berlin and 70 of 82 people were killed.
(www.emergency-management.net/avi_acc_1979_1989.htm)
1987 Dec 12, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, during a visit to Denmark, urged U.S. al-lies to increase spending on conventional forces, following the signing of a superpower inter-mediate-range missile ban treaty.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1987 Dec 12, Clifton Chenier, Zydeco accordionist, died. In 1998 Michael Tisserand published "The Kingdom of Zydeco" and Rick Olivier and Ben Sandmel published the photo documentary "Zydeco!"
(WSJ, 4/19/99, p.A20)(http://experts.about.com/e/c/cl/Clifton_Chenier.htm)
1988 Dec 12, In the Clapham rail disaster 35 people were killed in a triple train collision during morning rush-hour in south London.
(AP, 12/12/98)(Econ, 2/14/04, p.51)
1989 Dec 12, In New York, hotel queen Leona Helmsley was sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion. Helmsley served 18 months behind bars, plus a month at a halfway house and two months of house arrest.
(AP, 12/12/99)
1989 Dec 12, Amid international criticism, Britain forcibly removed 51 Vietnamese from Hong Kong and returned them to their homeland.
(AP, 12/12/99)
1990 Dec 12, President Bush announced that he and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev would hold a summit the following February in Moscow.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1990 Dec 12, Lauro Cavazos resigned as US secretary of education.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1991 Dec 12, Russian President Boris Yeltsin won landslide approval in the Russian legislature for his new commonwealth, while Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev edged closer to resigning, saying, “The main work of my life is done."
(AP, 12/12/01)
1992 Dec 12, President-elect Clinton tapped Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty to be his chief of staff and Democratic national chairman Ron Brown to be commerce secretary.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1992 Dec 12, At least 2,200 people were killed in an earthquake that struck the Flores Island region of Indonesia.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1993 Dec 12, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chief Yasser Arafat failed to re-solve disputes over a plan to start withdrawing Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and Jericho before a deadline.
(AP, 12/12/98)
1993 Dec 12, In Russian parliamentary elections, ultranationalist parties gained strong sup-port, causing concern among foreign governments. Russia adopted a new democratic constitution and began the war with Chechnya. The constitution permitted land sales but no laws to implement sales were enacted until 1997. The preamble began with the words We the multinational people of the Russian Federation.
(SFC, 12/27/96, p.B2)(WSJ, 11/13/97, p.A1)(SFC, 7/7/98, p.B3)(AP, 12/12/98)
1994 Dec 12, IBM stopped shipments of personal computers with Intel's flawed Pentium chip, saying the processor's problems were worse than earlier believed.
(AP, 12/12/99)
1994 Dec 12, The Brazilian Supreme Court acquitted former President Fernando Collor de Mello of the corruption charges that had forced him to resign in 1992.
(AP, 12/12/99)
1995 Dec 12, By only three votes, the US Senate killed a constitutional amendment giving Congress authority to outlaw flag burning and other forms of desecration against Old Glory.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1995 Dec 12, Willie Brown beat incumbent mayor Frank Jordon to become the first African-American mayor of San Francisco. California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown was elected mayor of San Francisco in a victory over Frank Jordan 57 to 43%.
(WSJ, 12/14/95, p.A-1)(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.A16) (HN, 12/12/98)
1995 Dec 12, Two French airmen shot down over Bosnia arrived home after nearly four months as captives of the Bosnian Serbs.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1996 Dec 12, Jonas Mekas, president of the Anthology Film Archives, received a special citation from the New York Film Critics’ Circle for his longtime contributions of independent film.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C8)
1996 Dec 12, Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz resigned as Walt Disney Company's No. 2 executive.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1996 Dec 12, Scientists announced that the Jovian moon, Ganymede, possesses a strong magnetic field due to a molten core. Its outer layer solid ice was said to measure some 500 miles thickness.
(SFC, 12/12/96, p.A2)
1996 Dec 12, In Indonesia Muchtar Pakpahan, leader of the independent labor union, went on trial with members of the leftist political party in connection with the July riots.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.B4)
1996 Dec 12, An accord to abolish tariffs on high tech goods was reached in Singapore at the WTO meeting. The Information Technology Agreement to abolish import duties on high-tech equipment would be in effect from Jul 1, 1997 to Jan 1, 2000.
(WSJ, 12/13/96, p.A1)(SFC, 12/14/96, p.D1)
1996 Dec 12, In Iraq Uday Hussein, eldest son of Sadam, was wounded in a car ambush by assailants with machine guns and grenades. The Mohammed Madhlum Dulaimi Group claimed responsibility.
(WSJ, 12/13/96, p.A1)(SFC, 12/14/96, p.A11)
1997 Dec 12, SFX Entertainment negotiated the purchase of Bill Graham Presents for $65 million.
(SFC, 12/13/97, p.A15)
1997 Dec 12, In Orlando, Fla., John Armstrong was killed by police after a 4-day hostage crises during which he held two children captive. He killed a man just before taking the 2 children hostage. He had been released from prison in March after serving less than a third of a 12-year sentence for robbery in 1989.
(SFEC, 12/14/97, p.A2)
1997 Dec 12, Negotiators in Geneva for the World Trade Organization (WTO) signed an ac-cord to open up the banking and insurance sectors of some 70 member countries to foreign competition.
(SFC, 12/13/97, p.A10)
1997 Dec 12, The IMF announced that it would ask members to boost its capital base by $160 billion. In Sept. a $90 billion increase was approved.
(SFC, 12/13/97, p.A14)
1997 Dec 12, The Cayman Islands told the Norwegian Cruise Line that a chartered 910-passenger ship of gay people would not be allowed to dock.
(SFC, 1/7/98, p.A8)
1997 Dec 12, Japanese train builders (Maglev) claimed world speed record at 332 MPH.
(www.rtri.or.jp/rd/maglev/html/english/maglev_introduction_E.html)
1997 Dec 12, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the international terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal," went on trial in Paris on charges of killing two French investigators and a Lebanese national. He was convicted and began serving a life prison sentence.
(AP, 12/12/98)
1997 Dec 12, In Peru archeologists announced the finding of a 2nd mummy of a young Inca sacrificed over 500 years ago near the summit of Mt. Ampato, not far from Peru’s 2nd city Arequipa.
(SFC, 12/13/97, p.A14)
1997 Dec 12, In South Korea Dongsuh Securities, the country’s 4th largest brokerage firm, went bankrupt. Korea’s stock index fell to its lowest level in 10 years. The central bank said it would pump $6.5 billion in emergency loans into domestic financial institutions to resuscitate the financial system.
(SFC, 12/13/97, p.A10)
1997 Dec 12, In South Korea Pres. candidate Kim Dae Jung set up a teleconference with George Soros, Michael Jackson and Mickey Kantor.
(SFC, 12/16/97, p.A1)
1997 Dec 12, In Switzerland the high court told Swiss banks to send some $500 million in as-sets of the late Ferdinand Marcos back to the Philippines.
(SFC, 12/13/97, p.A14)
1998 Dec 12, The House Judiciary Committee approved a 4th and final article of impeachment against Pres. Clinton as he flew for a three-day visit to the Middle East aimed at rescuing the Wye River peace accords.
(SFEC, 12/13/98, p.A1)(AP, 12/12/99)
1998 Dec 12, In Osseo, Mich., a fireworks explosion at the Independence Professional Fire-works building killed at least 7 people.
(SFEC, 12/13/98, p.A34)
1998 Dec 12, Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles died in Tallahassee at age 68. He had acquired wealth as one of the original investors in Red Lobster restaurants.
(SFEC, 12/13/98, p.C14)
1998 Dec 12, Mo Udall, former state Representative from Arizona, died at age 76. He had served in the House from 1961-1991.
(SFC, 12/14/98, p.A5)(WSJ, 12/14/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 12, In Afghanistan a 5.4 earthquake hit Kabul and killed at least 5 people.
(SFEC, 12/13/98, p.A36)
1998 Dec 12, Marc Hodler (1919-2006), Swiss lawyer and International Olympics Committee official, unleashed a series of corruption allegations that included systemic buying and selling of votes in Olympic bidding, particularly for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
(SFC, 10/21/06, p.B6)
1999 Dec 12, Joseph Heller, author of "Catch-22," died at age 76 in East Hampton, N.Y. His 1998 memoir was titled "Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here." Other novels included "God Knows" (1984) and "Closing Time" (1994). His final work was "Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man." In 2011 Tracy Dougherty authored “Just One Catch: A Biography of Joseph Heller."
(SFC, 12/14/99, p.A10)(WSJ, 6/9/00, p.W9)(SSFC, 8/21/11, p.F1)
1999 Dec 12, The Int'l. Olympic Committee enacted sweeping reforms that included a ban on visits by members to bid cities.
(SFC, 12/13/99, p.A1)
1999 Dec 12, The Erika, a Maltese registered oil tanker, broke in two during a storm off the coast of Brest, France, with 8 million gallons of diesel oil. Half the ship was towed to deeper waters and 3 million gallons were spilled. In 2008 a French court found Total SA guilty of maritime pollution and fined it the maximum penalty of $560,000. It also ordered Total and three other defendants to pay total damages of $285 million.
(SFC, 12/13/99, p.A13)(WSJ, 12/13/99, p.A1)(SFC, 11/20/02, p.A14)(AP, 1/16/08)
1999 Dec 12, In Chile Ricardo Lagos and Joaquin Lavin stood at a virtual tie in presidential elections. A runoff was set for Jan 16.
(SFC, 12/13/99, p.A12)
1999 Dec 12, Sudan's Pres. Omar el-Bashir dissolved parliament, headed by Hassan Turabi, under a 3-month state of emergency. He cited internal and foreign threats. Parliament had been due to enact new constitutional amendments that would have taken away the president’s say in the appointment of provincial governors.
(WSJ, 12/13/99, p.A1)(SFC, 12/14/99, p.A12)(Econ, 6/28/03, p.48)
2000 Dec 12, Pres. Clinton spoke at the northern Irish border town of Dundalk and urged the protection of the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B2)
2000 Dec 12, A divided U.S. Supreme Court reversed a state court decision for recounts in Florida's contested election, effectively transforming George W. Bush into the president-elect. The high court agreed, 7-to-2, to reverse the Florida court's order of a state recount and voted 5-to-4 that there was no acceptable procedure by which a timely new recount could take place. A later review of the ballots suggested that George W. bush would have won anyway.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 11/12/01, p.A1)(AP, 12/12/01)
2000 Dec 12, The Marine Corps grounded all eight of its high-tech V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor air-craft following a fiery crash in North Carolina that killed four Marines.
(AP, 12/12/01)
2000 Dec 12, General Motors, under new CEO Rick Wagoner, announced a restructure and planned phase out of the Oldsmobile vehicle division following a long slide in sales.
(WSJ, 12/12/00, p.A3)(SFC, 12/13/00, p.a3)(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.B2)
2000 Dec 12, Actor George Montgomery (84) died in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
(AP, 12/12/01)
2000 Dec 12, Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a peace pact in Algiers. A 4,200 UN peacekeeping force was set to patrol the border. PM Zenawi and Pres. Afwerki signed the accord, which established a commission to mark the 620-mile border, exchange prisoners, returned displaced people and hear claims for war damages.
(SFC, 12/4/00, p.E2)(WSJ, 12/5/00, p.A1)(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B3)
2000 Dec 12, It was reported that Islamic militants in Indonesia had damaged hundreds of night spots, mostly around greater Jakarta. The Islamic Defender’s Front (FPI) and Front Hizbullah claimed responsibility.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.A18)
2000 Dec 12, Israeli soldiers killed Yousef Abu Swayeh (27), a West Bank Palestinian leader.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B4)
2000 Dec 12, Spanish police arrested Valdimir Gusinsky, a Russian media magnate, on a Russian warrant for misrepresenting assets for loans.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B4)
2001 Dec 12, US federal agents began a crackdown on student visa violations and arrested 10 foreigners in San Diego.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 12, In Los Angeles police arrested Irving David Rubin (56) and Earl Leslie Krugel (59), leaders of the Jewish Defense League, for plotting to blow up a local mosque.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A3)
2001 Dec 12, Ali-al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was arrested in Peoria, Ill. He had reportedly entered the USA legally with his wife and five children on 10 September 2001 to pursue post-graduate studies at Bradley Univ. 18 months later, as he was on the verge of trial for credit card fraud and other charges, Pres. Bush declared him an enemy combatant and moved him into military detention. In 2008 the US Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the president may order that people seized in the US be held indefinitely and without criminal charges.
(www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21383.htm)(WSJ, 12/6/08, p.A1)
2001 Dec 12, Gerardo Hernandez, the leader of a Cuban spy ring, received a life sentence in federal court in Miami for his role in the infiltration of US military bases and the deaths of four Cuban-Americans in 1996.
(AP, 12/12/02)
2001 Dec 12, David Criswell, director of the Univ. of Houston Space Systems Operations, proposed a “Lunar Solar Power System" to collect solar energy on the moon, convert it to microwaves, and beam it to Earth for electrical power.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A5)
2001 Dec 12, A $200 million US Air Force B-1 bomber crashed into the India Ocean near Diego Garcia Island. The 4 crewmen were rescued.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A12)
2001 Dec 12, In Afghanistan al Qaeda fighters at Tora Bora were given a new ultimatum to surrender and turn over their leaders.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 12, Lt. Gen. Abdullah Hendropriyono, the Indonesia intelligence chief, said that a network of al Qaeda training camps were located on Sulawesi Island.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A12)
2001 Dec 12, Palestinian militants detonated bombs beneath an Israeli bus in the West Bank and gunned down passengers as they fled. 10 people were killed. Police killed 1 of 3 militants. Yasser Arafat bowed to long-standing Israeli demands by ordering closed the offices of the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad. 2 Hamas suicide bombers sd’d near an Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip and injured 4 others.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A1,17)(AP, 12/12/02)
2002 Dec 12, Pres. Bush announced a series of regulatory changes to allow religious social-service organizations to receive more government grants and contracts. Bush named Stephen Friedman, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, as his chief economic advisor.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A3)(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A8)
2002 Dec 12, President Bush publicly rebuked Senate Republican leader Trent Lott for his statement that appeared to embrace half-century-old segregationist politics, calling it "offensive" and "wrong."
(AP, 12/12/03)
2002 Dec 12, President Bush named Wall Street investment banker Stephen Friedman to head his National Economic Council, replacing Lawrence Lindsey, who'd been ousted along with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2002 Dec 12, Actor Nick Nolte pleaded no contest in Malibu, Calif., to one count of driving un-der the influence of drugs; he was sentenced to three years' probation.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2002 Dec 12, Dee Brown (94), author of "Bury My heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West" (1970), died in Little Rock, Ark.
(SFC, 12/16/02, p.A23)
2002 Dec 12, Brad Dexter (85), film actor, died. His films included "The Magnificent Seven" and "Run Silent, Run Deep."
(SFC, 12/16/02, p.A23)
2002 Dec 12, In western Algeria a bomb exploded at an outdoor market, killing four people and wounding 16.
(AP, 12/12/02)
2002 Dec 12, Australia's highest court dismissed one of the nation's longest running tribal land claims. The Yorta tribe began the battle in 1994 for a special property right known as native title in 800 square miles of land around the Murray River in eastern Australia. The area is now occupied by farmers.
(AP, 12/12/02)
2002 Dec 12, In Brazil Pres.-elect Lula da Silva nominated Henrique Meirelles, a former executive for FleetBoston, as Central Bank governor.
(WSJ, 12/14/02, p.A12)
2002 Dec 12, Israeli troops near Hebron shot and killed 2 armed Palestinians in separate incidents.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A22)
2002 Dec 12, North Korea said it was immediately activating the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon that was shut down in 1994, due to suspension of fuel deliveries.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 12, Opec agreed to cut oil production by as much as 7%, well ahead of a seasonal decline.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.B1)
2003 Dec 12, Pres. Bush said that Halliburton, VP Dick Cheney's former company, should repay the government if it overcharged for gasoline delivered in Iraq under a prewar contract.
(AP, 12/12/03)(WSJ, 12/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 12, Pres. Bush signed legislation calling for economic penalties against Syria for not doing enough to fight terrorism.
(SFC, 12/13/03, p.A3)
2003 Dec 12, In California Hispanics protested the repeal of a law allowing illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses, taking to the streets in a statewide boycott of schools and businesses.
(AP, 12/12/03)(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 12, It was reported that researchers had found a gene in worms that was responsible for drunkenness.
(WSJ, 12/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 12, Former Azerbaijani Pres. Geidar Aliev (Heydar Aliyev, b.1923), a former KGB general and Communist Party chief who brought stability to a nation plagued by insurgencies, died at the Cleveland Clinic.
(AP, 12/12/03)(SFC, 12/13/03, p.A20)
2003 Dec 12, In London, England, Mick Jagger (b.1943) of the Rolling Stones was knighted.
(SFC, 12/13/03, p.A2)
2003 Dec 12, Paul Martin was sworn in as Canada's 21st prime minister with a vow to make drastic changes in the way the country is run.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2003 Dec 12, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Mexico in a bid to extend a string of re-cent diplomatic and economic successes in North America. In 2002 China shipped $6.3 billion in goods to Mexico, undercutting many local goods.
(SFC, 12/4/03, p.A22)(AP, 12/12/03)
2003 Dec 12, Insurgents detonated a bomb alongside a U.S. military convoy west of Baghdad on Friday, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2003 Dec 12, Several people fell ill across Italy after drinking apparently tainted bottled mineral water, the latest in a scare that has prompted prosecutors to launch investigations across the nation.
(AP, 12/13/03)
2003 Dec 12, A UN conference on climate control closed in Milan, Italy. Many countries planned to go ahead with their Kyoto Protocol commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
(AP, 12/13/03)
2003 Dec 12, Ivory Coast state security forces repulsed an assault near the state television station after a two-hour battle that left 18 people dead.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2003 Dec 12, Japan pledged $3 billion in new aid to southeast Asia and promised to work with the region to bolster security ties, liberalize trade and create a broad "economic partnership.
(AP, 12/13/03)
2003 Dec 12, Three Dutch Protestant churches formally agreed to put aside their ideological differences and merge, the culmination of a process that began more than 40 years ago.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2003 Dec 12, Keiko the killer whale (27), whose early life inspired the film "Free Willy," died in Norway of apparent pneumonia.
(SFC, 12/13/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 12, Fadwa Toukan (b.1917), Palestinian poet, died in Nablus at age 86.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.A31)
2003 Dec 12, In South Korea Park Jie-won, a confidant of former Pres. Kim Dae-jung, was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in jail for taking $12.5 million in bribes from a major conglomerate and illegally remitting money to North Korea ahead of a 2000 inter-Korean summit.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2004 Dec 12, Researchers said they may have discovered what causes psoriasis, a common and irritating skin ailment.
(Reuters, 12/13/04)
2004 Dec 12, A US soldier died of wounds sustained when a roadside bomb hit his patrol in Baghdad. 8 US Marines with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force died while conducting "security and stabilization operations" in Fallujah and Ramadi in Anbar province.
(AP, 12/12/04)(SFC, 12/13/04, p.A9)
2004 Dec 12, The Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) decided to leave the ruling coalition of Pres. Lula da Silva. The principals included 6 state governors.
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.48)
2004 Dec 12, China dropped geographic restrictions against foreign insurers.
(WSJ, 12/13/04, p.A14)
2004 Dec 12, In southern China a flood at a mine trapped 36 workers in Guizhou province.
(AP, 12/12/04)
2004 Dec 12, The Israeli Cabinet agreed to release scores of Palestinian prisoners as a gesture to Egypt and the Palestinian leadership ahead of next month's Palestinian elections. The Israeli army fired three tank shells at the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday, wounding seven schoolchildren.
(AP, 12/12/04)
2004 Dec 12, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas apologized to Kuwaitis for the Palestinian support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2004 Dec 12, Palestinians detonated a massive bomb under an Israeli military checkpoint killing at least 5 Israeli soldiers.
(SFC, 12/13/04, p.A6)(AP, 12/12/05)
2004 Dec 12, In the southern Philippines a powerful explosion ripped through an outdoor market packed with Christmas shoppers, killing at least 15 people and injuring 58 others.
(AP, 12/12/04)
2004 Dec 12, Romanians returned to the polls for a presidential runoff between PM Adrian Nastase and Bucharest Mayor Traian Basescu. Reformist opposition candidate Traian Basescu won Romania's presidential runoff election.
(AP, 12/13/04)
2004 Dec 12, In Russia hundreds of Kremlin gathered on Constitution Day to denounce a re-treat from democracy as Pres. Putin signed a bill eliminating gubernatorial elections.
(SFC, 12/13/04, p.A3)
2005 Dec 12, Pres. Bush for the 1st time put a number on the death toll of Iraqi civilians saying some 30,000 had died since the start of the war with US troops looses at about 2,140.
(SFC, 12/13/05, p.A10)
2005 Dec 12, Donald Keyser, a US State Department official, pleaded guilty to removing top secret government documents while conducting a "personal relationship" with a Taiwanese spy, Isabelle Cheng, from 1992-2004.
(Reuters, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, US federal agents raided 13 San Diego-area marijuana dispensaries.
(SFC, 12/14/05, p.B3)
2005 Dec 12, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to block the imminent execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, rejecting the notion that the founder of the murderous Crips gang had atoned for his crimes and found redemption on death row.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2005 Dec 12, ConocoPhillips, the 3rd biggest US oil company, said it will acquire Burlington Resources in a deal worth $35.6 billion.
(SFC, 12/13/05, p.D2)
2005 Dec 12, PepsiCo overtook Coca-Cola in market capitalization for the 1st time.
(Econ, 12/17/05, p.61)
2005 Dec 12, Young people riding in vehicles smashed cars and store windows in suburban Sydney, a day after thousands of drunken white youths attacked people they believed were of Arab descent at a beach in the same area in one of Australia's worst outbursts of racial violence. About 50 cars had swept into the area, disgorging men of Middle Eastern appearance who began trashing every car in sight with baseball bats.
(AFP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said China surpassed the US as the world's top exporter of laptop computers, mobile phones and other information and communications technology devices in 2004.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, About 2,000 right-wing paramilitary fighters (AUC), including a warlord considered a major drug trafficker by the US, turned in weapons and helicopter gunships in one of Colombia's largest disarmament ceremonies in years.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, French counterterrorism agents, some heavily armed and wearing black hoods, raided homes and Internet cafes in a sweep against a suspected Islamic network, arresting more than 20 suspects.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, In Haiti protesters angry over the treatment of Haitian migrants in neighboring Dominican Republic clashed with police during a visit by the Dominican president, and at least three people were wounded by gunshots.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, Trade ministers gathered in Hong Kong to work on a deal to open markets and boost the global economy, with the EU quickly under fire for its refusal to cut farm subsidies further.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, In Iraq patients, soldiers and prisoners began voting in parliamentary elections, a few days ahead of the general population, while insurgent violence killed at least 12 people and wounded more than two dozen.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, Japan gave the final go-ahead to resume imports of some US beef after a two-year ban due to fears of mad cow disease, averting a potential trade war between the close political allies.
(AFP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, In Kashmir Indian troops shot dead three Islamic militants, while suspected rebels shot dead a shopkeeper in revolt-hit Kashmir.
(AFP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, In Lebanon Gibran Tueni (48), general manager and chief columnist of the An-Nahar newspaper, died when a car bomb struck his motorcade in Beirut's suburb of Mkalles. The bombing killed two other people and wounded 30 more. Tueni was killed a day after returning from France, where he had been staying periodically for fear of assassination. He was assassinated at a time when several anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians and journalists were targeted following the killing of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri. He was the son of former ambassador Ghassan Tueni.
(AP, 12/13/05)(AFP, 6/8/12)
2005 Dec 12, Swedish home-appliance maker AB Electrolux said it will close its plant in Nuremberg, Germany, by the end of 2007, transferring production to Poland and Italy and eliminating 1,750 jobs.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 12, The president of Turkmenistan ordered construction of a university to be named after his book "Rukhnama," which is held as a sacred text in this ex-Soviet republic.
(AP, 12/13/05)
2006 Dec 12, A US immigration sweep of 6 Swift meat plants resulted in nearly 1,300 arrests of illegal immigrants. The action culminated a 10-month investigation targeting the use of stolen social security numbers.
(Reuters, 12/13/06)(SFC, 12/13/06, p.A13)(WSJ, 12/20/06, p.B1)
2006 Dec 12, In Texas former Congressman Ciro Rodriguez defeated seven-term Republican Henry Bonilla in a runoff election, adding another Democrat to Congress.
(AP, 12/13/06)
2006 Dec 12, Online political groups, the Campaign to Defend the Constitution and the Christian Alliance for Progress, demanded that Wal-Mart dump Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a new computer game in which players must either kill or convert non-Christians.
(SFC, 12/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Dec 12, The Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. formally launched its hostile $5.3 billion takeover bid for the London Stock Exchange Group PLC, which promptly reiterated that the offer is too low and urged its shareholders to take no action on it.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, Peter Boyle (71), the actor who played the hilariously grouchy father on "Every-body Loves Raymond," died. His films “Joe" (1970), "Young Frankenstein" (1974) and “Taxi Driver" (1976).
(AP, 12/14/06)
2006 Dec 12, Alan Shugart, disk drive pioneer, died in Monterey, Ca. Shugart led a team of IBM engineers in 1969 that developed the floppy disk and went on to found Shugart Associates. In 1979 he co-founded Seagate Technology.
(SFC, 12/14/06, p.B5)
2006 Dec 12, A new environmental report said fertilizer and sediment runoff from sugarcane, banana and pineapple plantations are threatening tourism by damaging a coral reef stretching along the Caribbean coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras.
(AP, 12/13/06)
2006 Dec 12, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber blew himself up at the governor's compound in southern Helmand province, killing 8 people, including 6 policemen and 2 civilians. In eastern Afghanistan 4 "military-aged males" and a girl (13) were killed in a raid by Afghan and US-led coalition forces. 8 suspected Taliban militants were killed and a policeman wounded in a joint operation by the Afghan police and army in western Farah province.
(AP, 12/12/06)(AP, 12/14/06)
2006 Dec 12, In Belarus Alexander Kozulin, a jailed former opposition presidential candidate, ended a hunger strike after refusing food for 54 days.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, In southeastern Brazil a couple and their 5-year-old son were tied up, locked in their car and burned to death during a robbery.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, British detectives hunting a serial killer who preys on prostitutes discovered two more bodies in Ipswich, bringing the total number of victims to five.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, China’s state press reported that Liu Zhihua (57), a former Beijing vice mayor in charge of 2008 Olympic construction projects, was ousted from the ruling Communist Party for graft and faces judicial prosecution.
(AFP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, Czech president Vaclav Klaus pledged to forge closer ties with Prague's biggest African trade partner as he became the first leader from the eastern European nation to visit South Africa.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, Eritrea said it aims to become the 1st country in the world to turn its entire coast into an environmentally protected zone to ensure balanced and sustainable development.
(AFP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, Ethiopia’s former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, in exile in Zimbabwe since 1992, was convicted of genocide and other charges in a rare case of an African strongman being held to account by his own country.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, A UN-backed commission, the Int’l. Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), was established to investigate rampant organized crime in Guatemala, which authorities said has become a key point of transit for smugglers bringing drugs into the US.
(AP, 12/12/06)(Econ, 3/13/10, p.39)
2006 Dec 12, A two-day conference questioning the existence of the Nazi Holocaust ended in Tehran.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2006 Dec 12, In Iraq 2 car bombs targeting day laborers looking for work exploded within seconds of each other on a main square in central Baghdad, killing at least 63 people and wounding scores. A television cameraman working for The Associated Press was shot to death by insurgents while covering clashes in Mosul.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, Malaysia's twelfth king, Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin (63), stepped down from his post after a five-year reign to make way for the next monarch in a send-off steeped in color and tradition.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, Mexico's new president launched his first major offensive against drug gangs, sending more than 6,500 federal forces to Michoacan, his violence-plagued home state, to crack down on turf wars that have left hundreds dead in a wave of execution-style killings and beheadings. The body of Luis Felipe Zavala, cousin of Mexico's first lady Margarita Zavala, was found in his minivan in the city of Naucalpan in Mexico State.
(AP, 12/12/06)(AP, 12/14/06)
2006 Dec 12, Hamas gunmen fired on demonstrators from the rival Fatah movement, wounding four people and intensifying fears of a new wave of Palestinian infighting.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, In Rwanda an ex-Interahamwe member said that he had participated in trans-porting weapons from a French military plane in the former Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo, to the north Rwanda province of Gisenyi during the 1994 genocide. Witness #4 told a Rwandan commission that French troops raped women fleeing militia gangs during the African country's 1994 genocide.
(AFP, 12/12/06)(Reuters, 12/13/06)
2006 Dec 12, Russia's Gazprom closed in on half of Royal Dutch Shell's $22 billion Sakhalin-2 energy project while Shell denied it had buckled under Kremlin pressure and warned Moscow the world was watching.
(AP, 12/12/06)(WSJ, 12/12/06, p.A3)
2006 Dec 12, Somalia’s PM Ali Mohamed Gedi said thousands of Islamic militants have sur-rounded Baidoa, the only town the internationally recognized government controls, as a top Islamic official promised to attack within a week unless Ethiopian troops leave.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, South Korea opened the world's largest garbage-fuelled power plant and expects to reduce its imports of heavy oil by 500,000 barrels a year as a result. South Korea currently relies heavily on nuclear power plants which supply 40% of demand.
(AFP, 12/13/06)
2006 Dec 12, Hundreds of Spanish police and security officials arrested at least 11 suspected Islamic militants in pre-dawn raids in Ceuta, a tiny Spanish enclave on Morocco's coast.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 12, In St. Vincent Sean Samuel beheaded Stacy Wilson, a 21-year-old woman, in front of horrified onlookers at a bus terminal in Kingstown.
(AP, 12/13/06)
2006 Dec 12, The UN inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said it has now identified suspects and witnesses and found possible links to 14 other murders or attempted murders in Lebanon in the last two years.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2007 Dec 12, President George W. Bush vetoed a second bill that would have expanded government-provided health insurance for children.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2007 Dec 12, Republican presidential rivals gathered in Johnston, Iowa, called for deep cuts in federal spending in a debate remarkably free of acrimony.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2007 Dec 12, The US announced that it has sent 15 prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay prison back to their home nations.
(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 12, Three British oil executives pleaded guilty in a Houston court to price-fixing. They were accused of conspiring from 1999-2007 to fix the prices of millions of dollars worth of marine hoses used to transfer oil between tankers and storage facilities. They were permitted to return to Britain and to plead guilty to charges there.
(www.thelawyer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=130424&d=415&h=417&f=416)
2007 Dec 12, Igor Olenicoff (65), California billionaire real estate developer, pleaded guilty to lying on his tax returns and paid $52 million in back taxes, one of the largest individual tax cases in Southern California history.
(www.ocregister.com/money/olenicoff-tax-million-1940962-company-agreement)
2007 Dec 12, Police in northern California arrested Art Cheney, a winery tour guide dubbed “The Highway 101 Bandit," following his robbery of a bank in Fairfield. He had robbed at least 17 banks, including at least 8 in the Bay Area, most of which were on the Highway 101 corridor. In 2008 Cheney (65) was sentenced to 90 months in prison and ordered to pay back the $50,760 that he stole.
(SFC, 12/14/07, p.A1)(SFC, 10/21/08, p.B3)
2007 Dec 12, Ike Turner (b.1931), R&B pioneer and former husband of Tina Turner, died due to a cocaine overdose at his home outside San Diego. He presided over the 1951 recording of “Rocket 88," frequently cited as the first rock ’n’ roll record. In 1966 Phil Spector produced “River Deep – Mountain High" with Ike and Tina. The pair split in 1976. In 1989 Ike went to prison on drug charges and was still there when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.
(SFC, 12/13/07, p.B5)(Econ, 12/22/07, p.142)(SFC, 1/17/08, p.A7)
2007 Dec 12, Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said Afghan soldiers backed by NATO air power killed more than 50 Taliban fighters during a two-day battle with militants who tried to attack Sangin near Musa Qala, where they were routed from this week. A suicide car bomb exploded near an Afghan army convoy in the southern city of Kandahar, killing one person.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, A new report said the trafficking of Bulgarian women as sex slaves brings in about 1.8 billion euros ($2.6 billion) a year for the gangs behind it, making it the country's most profitable criminal activity.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, China launched a nationwide recall system that shifts responsibility to companies to recall harmful drugs. In eastern China a fire tore through an apartment building, killing at least 21 people and injuring two others.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, In Colombia 3 young highway bandits set fire to a bus during a botched robbery near Bogota, burning to death 10 people including 2 assailants and the bus driver. The 3rd assailant (23) was arrested.
(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 12, Tropical Storm Olga soaked portions of the Caribbean, triggering floods and landslides that killed at least 38 people in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico.
(AP, 12/12/07)(AP, 12/13/07)(WSJ, 12/15/07, p.A1)
2007 Dec 12, The European Central Bank said it would take joint action with the US Federal Reserve and other institutions to offer short-term funding to the money markets to help ease a global credit squeeze. The ECB said it would provide as much as $20 billion to European banks, in part to fill their demand for dwindling dollars.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, Ashraf Juma Hajuj, the Palestinian-born doctor held with five Bulgarian nurses in a Libyan prison for over eight years, filed suit in Paris against Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi for torture. The six medics, who always maintained their innocence, said they were subjected to torture, including beatings, electric shocks, food and sleep deprivation, and even sexual abuse, in order to confess to their alleged crime.
(AFP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 12, Tens of thousands of demonstrators jammed central Athens and the northern city of Thessaloniki as a general strike to protest government plans to reform the country's debt-ridden pension system brought Greece to a standstill.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, India announced major plans to increase its nuclear capabilities, saying it was close to testing a ballistic missile capable of hitting targets up to 6,000 kilometers (3,800 miles) away.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, In Indonesia new Australian PM Kevin Rudd completed ratification of the Kyoto Protocol as he pressed for all nations, rich and poor, to commit to fighting global warming.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, Three car bombs exploded in quick succession in the market district of Amarah, a southern Iraqi city, killing at least 25 people with 150 wounded. The city is the provincial capital of Maysan province, which borders Iran. In eastern Baghdad a parked car bomb apparently targeting a passing police patrol killed five civilians. 13 people were wounded in the late after-noon explosion in Ghadeer. In the Kurdish dominated town of Khanaqin, 90 miles northeast of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed four civilians and wounded 12. A mass grave holding 16 bodies, all but four of them decapitated, was found in a palm grove in a former al-Qaida in Iraq stronghold outside Muqdadiyah. US soldiers killed two suspected insurgents and destroyed a weapons cache in the village of Bawi, on the outskirts of Salman Pak.
(AP, 12/12/07)(AP, 12/13/07)(AP, 12/12/08)
2007 Dec 12, The renewal of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians got off to a rocky start, with the Palestinians criticizing Israel for a construction project planned in disputed east Jerusalem, and Israel complaining about continued rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, It was reported that Italy's government has decided to appoint a special com-missioner to try to curb price rises after inflation hit a three-and-a-half year peak in November, but economists see the move as little more than a publicity stunt. Italy's truck drivers agreed to call off a protest that has blocked highways and borders for three days, causing shortages of gasoline, medicine and perishable foods across Italy.
(Reuters, 12/12/07)(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, A car bomb attack killed one of Lebanon's top generals and at least two other people. Brig. Gen. Francois Hajj (55), a top Maronite Catholic in the command, was considered a leading candidate to succeed the head of the military, Gen. Michel Suleiman, if Suleiman is elected president.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, It was reported that William Kamkwamba (20) of Masitala, Malawi, had built 3 windmills using blue-gum trees and bicycle parts after seeing a picture in an old text book.
(WSJ, 12/12/07, p.A1)
2007 Dec 12, The former governor of Nigeria's oil rich Delta state, James Ibori, was arrested on corruption and money-laundering charges. His state salary was less than $25,000 per year. In August a court in London ordered a freeze on $35 million of his worldwide assets.
(AP, 12/12/07)(Econ, 1/5/08, p.38)
2007 Dec 12, Pakistani troops killed 20 militants in an ongoing offensive against supporters of a pro-Taliban cleric in the restive northwestern valley of Swat. Residents said troops shot dead one person and wounded two others for violating curfew restrictions in the town of Fizaghat.
(AFP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, Palestinian pedestrians gawked at the unusual sight of female police officers directing traffic in Ramallah, the first batch of women to venture into a job traditionally reserved for men in the West Bank.
(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 12, US federal agents and local police launched raids in several Puerto Rican cities with arrest warrants for 121 drug suspects.
(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 12, Russia ordered a British cultural organization to suspend all of its operations outside Moscow at the beginning of 2008, the latest move in a long-running dispute. Russian officials accused the British Council, a non-governmental organization that acts as the cultural department of the British Embassy, of operating illegally in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, Veteran diplomat Yuli Vorontsov (78), who served the Soviet Union and Russia as ambassador to Afghanistan (1988-99) and the United States (1994-2000) in a career spanning the Cold War and the Gulf War, died in Moscow.
(AP, 12/14/07)
2007 Dec 12, Pirates freed a Japanese chemical tanker loaded with highly explosive benzene off the coast of Somalia, six weeks after seizing the vessel and its crew.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12-2007 Dec 14, In South Africa 49 patients, all with multidrug resistant (MDR) and extremely drug resistant (XDR) TB, escaped through holes they had cut through the perimeter fences of Jose Pearson Hospital in Port Elizabeth.
(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317354,00.html)
2007 Dec 12, Officials said South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic dis-eases.
(AFP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, North and south Sudanese leaders said they had resolved almost all their differences and that the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement would soon rejoin the unity cabinet.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, Thailand smashed through the 100-gold barrier at the SEA Games as they continued their relentless pursuit of top spot on the medals table.
(AFP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, The UN Yugoslav war crimes tribunal at The Hague sentenced former Bosnian Serb general Dragomir Milosevic (b.1942) to 33 years imprisonment for the shelling of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, one of the court's toughest sentences. In 2009 UN judges trimmed the sentence from 33 to 29 years but upheld his convictions for leading troops who terrorized Sarajevo with a deadly rain of shells and sniper bullets.
(AP, 12/12/07)(AP, 11/12/09)
2008 Dec 12, The White House and the Treasury said they were considering diverting money from the Wall Street rescue fund to stave off bankruptcy filings among the carmakers. General Motors Corp. said it will temporarily close 20 factories across North America and make sweeping cuts to its vehicle production as it tries to adjust to dramatically weaker automobile demand.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, The Bush administration issued a regulation exempting farms from reporting releases of hazardous air pollution from animal waste to federal, state and local authorities. The white House also approved a coal mining rule that makes it easier for some firms to dump rock and sludge near rivers.
(SFC, 12/13/08, p.A9)(WSJ, 12/13/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 12, In Woodburn, Oregon, a bomb exploded inside a branch of the West Coast Bank, killing a police officer and a state bomb disposal technician. Police arrested Joshua A. Turnidge (32), a steelworker, in Salem on Dec 14. Joshua’s father, Bruce Turnidge (57), was also soon arrested and charged with the bombing. In 2010 Bruce Turnidge and his son were convicted on 18 counts related to the bank bombing.
(AP, 12/13/08)(SSFC, 12/14/08, p.A6)(SFC, 12/15/08, p.A3)(SFC, 12/16/08, p.A4)(WSJ, 12/27/08, p.A2)(SFC, 12/9/10, p.A18)
2008 Dec 12, Cardinal Avery Dulles died in NYC. His more than 20 books included “Models of the Church" (1974). Dulles, the son of former Sec. of State John Foster Dulles, joined the Jesuits after he was discharged from the Navy in 1946.
(SFC, 12/13/08, p.B5)(http://ncrcafe.org/node/401)
2008 Dec 12, Van Johnson (b.1916), Hollywood film star, died in Nyack, NY. His boy-next-door wholesomeness made him a popular Hollywood star in the '40s and '50s with such films as "30 Seconds over Tokyo," "A Guy Named Joe" and "The Caine Mutiny."
(AP, 12/12/08)(SFC, 12/13/08, p.A5)
2008 Dec 12, In central Afghanistan NATO troops fired on a civilian bus that refused warnings to stop, killing four passengers in Wardak province.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, A court in Australia approved the use of Facebook, a popular social networking Web site, to notify a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan.
(AP, 12/16/08)
2008 Dec 12, Belgian authorities charged six suspected al-Qaida-linked extremists with membership in a terrorist group. They including a woman whose husband was involved in the assassination of Afghanistan's that killed anti-Taliban warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud, shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, In Chile admirers of former dictator Augusto Pinochet inaugurated a museum in his honor, a move they hope will burnish the image of a man reviled by much of the world.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Colombia extradited Diego Montoya, one of its most notorious drug trafficking suspects, to the United States to stand trial. Colombian authorities said he sent tons of cocaine to the United States and is responsible for at least 1,500 killings in a two-decade career.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Tassos Papadopoulos (b.1934), Cyprus' hardline former president (2003-2008), died of lung cancer in Nicosia. He had ushered the divided island into the European Union (2004) after rallying Greek Cypriots to reject a UN peace deal.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Ecuador’s Pres. Rafael Correa said his nation will skip a $30.6 million payment to bondholders due on Dec 15. This was Ecuador’s 3rd default in 3 decades.
(WSJ, 12/12/08, p.A8)(Econ, 7/4/09, p.34)
2008 Dec 12, Estonia’s parliament passed a law making it the first country to allow cellphone voting.
(WSJ, 12/13/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 12, European Union leaders agreed to give concessions to Ireland so it will hold a new referendum on the EU's stalled Lisbon reform treaty, which aims to make the 27-nation bloc a stronger player on the world stage.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Greek youths hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at riot police in Athens, who responded with stun grenades and tear gas. Despite seven straight days of unrest, Greece's prime minister rebuffed calls to resign and hold early elections.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, In Guatemala a mob in San Pedro Solom beat and then shot to death five men suspected of kidnapping a 15-year-old girl.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Nigeria's Pres. Umaru Yar'Adua vowed to speed up electoral reforms after overcoming a legal challenge to his election and receiving a report on problems with the country's electoral laws. The Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to dismiss a suit by opposition leaders, but conceded that widespread irregularities had occurred in his 2006 election.
(AFP, 12/12/08)(SSFC, 12/14/08, p.A20)
2008 Dec 12, Pakistan stage overnight raids, shut offices and arrested scores of activists of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), an Islamic charity associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba, as international pressure mounted for firm action against militants blamed for the Mumbai attacks. Maulana Masood Azhar, head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad group, blamed with Lashkar-e-Taiba for a 2001 attack on India's parliament, was also detained.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, The chief Palestinian negotiators said Israel proposed to annex 6.8 percent of the West Bank and to take in a few thousand refugees under a peace deal, but it has not revealed its position on the most contentious issue, the future of Jerusalem.
(AP, 12/13/08)
2008 Dec 12, In Poland negotiators at a UN climate conference broke through red tape and freed up millions of dollars to help poor countries adapt to increasingly severe droughts, floods and other effects of global warming.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Sir David Barclay and his twin brother, Sir Frederick Barclay, abruptly closed their businesses on the Channel Island of Sark and shut off the flow of investment after their candidates for the island's first elected parliament were largely rejected by voters. Only two of the nine candidates backed by the brothers won seats in the legislature. Nine of the 12 candidates they had denounced as "dangerous to Sark's future" were elected.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, In Sri Lanka clashes with troops left 10 rebels dead near their de facto northern capital.
(AP, 12/13/08)
2008 Dec 12, Switzerland became the 25th member of the passport-free zone of the Schengen countries, after interior and justice ministers of the 27 EU member states formally approved the accession of this non-EU country on Nov 27. The number of Chinese visitors quickly soared.
(www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home/reps/eur/vbel/ref_visinf/visbel.html)(Econ, 12/18/10, p.116)
2008 Dec 12, Taiwanese prosecutors indicted former President Chen Shui-bian on graft charges, a stunning blow for a man who rode to power 8 1/2 years ago on promises to reform the island's corrupt political culture.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, In Thailand a commercial fishing commission agreed to cut the catches of bigeye tuna in parts of the Pacific Ocean, a small step in an effort to save a threatened species that is a favorite among sushi lovers. Environmentalists lambasted the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission's decision to reduce catches by only 10 percent in each of the next three years. They wanted an immediate 30 percent reduction that scientists advising the body had recommended.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, A UN Security Council panel said that Rwanda and Congo are fighting a proxy war by aiding each other's enemies, a conclusion that could lead to additional UN sanctions over the conflict in the central African region. A UN report cited an advisor to Rwandan President Paul Kagame and a member of the Congolese opposition, both wealthy businessmen, as key financial backers of rebels in eastern DR Congo.
(AP, 12/12/08)(AFP, 12/13/08)
2008 Dec 12, The Vatican raised its opposition to embryonic stem cell research, the morning-after pill, in vitro fertilization and human cloning to a new level in a major new document on bio-ethics.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 12, Zimbabwe's central bank introduced a 500 million dollar note, as the African country struggles to cope with the world's highest inflation and crippling currency shortages.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2009 Dec 12, President Barack Obama singled out financial institutions for causing much of the economic tailspin and criticized their opposition to tighter federal oversight of their industry. The Democratic-controlled US Senate cleared away a Republican filibuster of a huge end-of-year spending bill that rewards most federal agencies with generous budget boosts.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Houston became the largest US city to elect an openly gay mayor, with voters handing a solid victory to City Controller Annise Parker (53) after a hotly contested runoff.
(AP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 12, Alabama running back Mark Ingram won this year’s Heisman trophy.
(AP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Berkeley, Ca., police arrested 8 people after a crowd of angry protesters broke windows and threw burning torches at the campus residence of UC chancellor Robert Birgeneau in protest over fee hikes and budget cuts.
(SSFC, 12/13/09, p.C1)
2009 Dec 12, In New York state truck driver Thomas Wallace hit a disabled car killing Julie Stratton (33). The car was disabled after hitting a deer. On Sep 1, 2010, Wallace was sentenced to 3-9 years in prison after pleading guilty to 2nd degree murder. His laptop computer was streaming pornography when his rig hit the disabled car.
(SFC, 9/2/10, p.A6)
2009 Dec 12, Abkhazia held elections. Preliminary results indicated that President Sergei Bagapsh defeated four other candidates. About 70% of the 130,000 registered voters took part in the vote. The province is also home to some 40,000 ethnic Georgians who are not eligible to vote because they don't hold Abkhazian passports. An estimated 200,000 ethnic Georgians fled Abkhazia in the 1990s.
(AP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Afghanistan Wahibuddin Sadat, the deputy mayor of Kabul, was arrested for alleged misuse of authority, part of a crackdown in the wake of massive international criticism of corruption in President Hamid Karzai's government. 3 Taliban fighters were killed when a road-side bomb they were planting exploded in Helmand province. 4 Afghan private security guards were killed when their car hit a roadside bomb elsewhere in Helmand.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, In China Liu Aibing (34) went on a rampage with his shotgun killing 12 people including his father. He was apprehended the next day in Gaoming town in Hunan province's Anhua county. Liu also seriously injured two other people and set six homes on fire. He was said to have had a long history of mental illness.
(AP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 12, It was reported that Cuba has detained an American government contractor and accused him of distributing cell phones, laptops and other communications equipment to political opposition groups on the island.
(SFC, 12/12/09, p.A2)
2009 Dec 12, In Denmark violence broke out in Copenhagen as tens of thousands took to the streets to demand tough measures on climate change, with demonstrators around the world rallying for action instead of words.
(AFP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Honduras a Foreign Ministry spokesman says Honduras will grant ousted Pres. Zelaya safe passage to any country that offers him asylum outside Central America.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Hong Kong 5 women and a man suffered burns in the incident in Causeway Bay, one of a spate of acid attacks in the city. One woman's face and chest were badly injured, with burns covering nearly 20 percent of her body. On Jan 14 police charged a 23-year-old man over the acid attack.
(AFP, 1/14/10)(www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/200912/13/P200912130264.htm)
2009 Dec 12, In India 20 state ministers resigned amid mounting street demonstrations and violence to protest India's decision to carve a new state out of southern Andhra Pradesh state.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Iran said it is ready to exchange the bulk of its stockpile of enriched uranium for nuclear fuel rods, as proposed by the UN, but according to its own mechanisms and timetable. Iran also said it needs up to 15 nuclear plants to generate electricity. Tens of thousands of hard-line clerics rallied in cities across the country to denounce student protesters who burned photos of the country's supreme leader in a taboo-shattering act earlier in the week.
(AP, 12/12/09)(Reuters, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Iraq sold Russian firm Lukoil rights to the West Qurna-2 oil field, one of the world's biggest untapped oil fields, on the 2nd day of an auction. Lukoil will work with junior partner StatoilHydro of Norway.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Italy at least 5 sperm whales died after a pod of nine beached on the southern coast. Experts called it a rare and puzzling mass beaching for such a large species. Officials were considering euthanizing the last two whales still trapped in high waves.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Kenya 12 players of the Eritrean national football squad failed to show up at the airport to return home. They were later reported to have disappeared in Nairobi with the intention of seeking asylum.
(AFP, 12/15/09)
2009 Dec 12, Human Rights Watch announced a report saying Libya continues to subject political dissidents to arbitrary detention and unfair trials despite limited improvements in freedom of expression since the country began to shed its pariah status in 2003.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Pakistan’s PM Yousuf Raza Gilani said his government may launch a new military offensive in Orakzai district near the Afghan border. Insurgent leaders are believed to have fled there to escape a government onslaught against the Taliban in South Waziristan. Interior Minister Rehman Malik mentioned North Waziristan as another potential front, though military officials have been loathe to say whether they would want to extend the fight there.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Al-Qaida issued a new English-language video denying it was behind a series of bombings in Pakistan that have killed hundreds of civilians, calling such attacks un-Islamic.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, A Palestinian man made homeless by last winter's Gaza war was the first to receive a UN-funded mud brick home, with UN aid officials saying they're reverting to ancient building techniques because Israel won't allow concrete and other construction materials into blockaded Gaza. A Palestinian farmer was killed when he was caught in the crossfire of a shootout between militants and Israeli soldiers in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
(AP, 12/12/09)(AFP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Rwanda held elections. President Paul Kagame was reelected with a crushing majority to head the Rwandan Patriotic Front party that has been in power since 1994.
(AFP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 12, Saudi newspapers said Saudi ground forces and Apache attack helicopters had battled Huthi fighters for two days at the Al-Jabri post on the Yemeni border in the southern province of Yemen, and repulsed attempted Huthi incursions. Saudi military denied a claim by Yemen's Huthi rebels that they seized a Saudi border post.
(AFP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, In South Africa drums and traditional dancers kicked off the Miss World pageant in Johannesburg. The glitzy night began in the shadow of reports that one contestant was linked to a religious cult. Kaiane Aldorino from Gibraltar was named the new Miss World.
(AFP, 12/12/09)(AP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Thailand 4 Kazakhs and a Belarusian were detained and their New Zealand registered aircraft impounded after it landed in the Thai capital with tons of war weaponry on board that originated in North Korea. The Ilyushin 76 transport from Kazakhstan was allegedly traveling from North Korea to Sri Lanka when it asked to land in Bangkok to refuel. According to a flight plan seen by arms trafficking researchers, the aircraft was chartered by Hong Kong-based Union Top Management Ltd. to fly oil industry spare parts from Pyongyang to Tehran, Iran, with several other stops, including Bangkok, Colombo in Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan and Ukraine. A New Zealand shell company, SP Trading Ltd., had leased the airplane.
(AP, 12/12/09)(AP, 12/23/09)(AP, 1/22/10)
2009 Dec 12, In Turkey angry Kurds battled Turkish police with rocks and firebombs to pro-test a decision by the country's top court to shut down a pro-Kurdish political party on charges of ties to militants.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 12, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was re-elected as ZANU-PF leader for the next five years, urging supporters to work for the survival of the party. Mugabe said the unity government is short-lived and he plans to regain his hold over the country.
(AFP, 12/12/09)(AP, 12/13/09)
2010 Dec 12, The Washington Post reported that 8 out of the 12 top US gun dealers whose products fuel Mexico's drug violence are located in the state of Texas. 3 others were in Arizona, and one was in California. There are 3,800 gun retailers in Texas, 300 in Houston alone.
(AFP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, A storm that spanned parts of eight states continued to dump heavy snow in the upper Midwest, collapsing the Metrodome in Minneapolis and forcing numerous road closures.
(AP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, In Long Beach, Ca., police officers shot Doug Zerby (35) over a dozen times as he manipulated a pistol grip water nozzle. The shooting spurred street protests. Prosecutors in 2011 said police acted lawfully in killing Zerby, who was drunk at the time. His family filed a federal civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit against the city.
(SFC, 11/4/11, p.C6)
2010 Dec 12, In southern Afghanistan an insurgent attack killed at least six foreign troops and two Afghan soldiers in Kandahar's Zhari district. Several suspects were arrested for the suicide attack that killed six US troops when an explosives-packed minibus blew up at the entrance of a joint NATO-Afghan base.
(Reuters, 12/12/10)(AP, 12/13/10)
2010 Dec 12, Australia unveiled tough changes to finance laws, banning unpopular mortgage fees and cracking down on price collusion between major banks in a bid to boost competition in the sector.
(AFP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, Bangladesh's Dhaka Stock Exchange plunged 3.32%, its biggest one-day fall since the index was introduced in 2001. Garment workers demanding the implementation of a new minimum wage clashed with police at an industrial zone in the southeast, leaving up to three people dead and 100 hurt.
(AFP, 12/12/10)(AP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, Hundreds of Egyptian activists and members of opposition groups protested against what they said were violations during a parliamentary vote that handed the ruling party a huge victory last month.
(Reuters, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, In Iran Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a prominent reformist journalist and head of the Journalists' Association of Iran, said he has been sentenced to 16 months in jail on charges of insulting Pres. Ahmadinejad and undermining the Islamic regime. Shamsolvaezin went on trial in October and has 20 days to appeal. Sajjad Qaderzadeh, the son of a woman whose death sentence by stoning caused world outrage, was released after paying a $40,000 bail.
(AFP, 12/12/10)(AP, 1/1/10)
2010 Dec 12, In Iraq a suicide bomber blew up his car outside government offices in Ramadi, killing at least 13 people, including women and elderly people waiting to collect welfare checks. Six police officers were among the dead. Near Baquba a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vest near an Ashura procession, killing three people.
(AP, 12/12/10)(AFP, 12/13/10)(SFC, 12/13/10, p.A3)
2010 Dec 12, Kosovars voted in the first general poll since the country's declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008, a critical election already marred by ethnic tension that many fear will split the world's newest country.
(AP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, Heavy rain and fierce winds pummeled countries across the Middle East, killing a woman in Lebanon, sinking a ship off Israel's coast and prompting Egypt to close its largest Mediterranean port. At least 3 people killed in Egypt as gale-force winds and torrential rain pounded the coastline.
(AP, 12/12/10)(AFP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 12, A foundation run by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam, released a mixed annual report on human rights in Libya, noting progress on some issues and failures in others.
(AFP, 12/13/10)
2010 Dec 12, Mexican police arrested Enrique Lopez of the notorious Sinaloa drug trafficking operation based in the northern Mexico town of Chihuahua. His brother, Ever Horacio Lopez, was shot and killed in the standoff with police. The men were lieutenants of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, said to be Mexico's most wanted man, who is believed to have escaped.
(AFP, 12/13/10)
2010 Dec 12, Nigeria's military said it had taken control of eight camps belonging to Ateke Tom, a militant leader in southern Rivers State. In the southeast Obioma Nwankwo, a gang leader accused of kidnapping children from a school bus, was killed. An unknown number of alleged gang members also died. 6 others were arrested. The operation freed a family of five.
(AFP, 12/13/10)
2010 Dec 12, Lawyers for a Sudanese campaign group launched a legal bid to halt Sudan's referendum on southern independence, accusing organizers of mishandling the process, a move which could derail the January 9 vote.
(Reuters, 12/12/10)
2011 Dec 12, In Oakland, Ca., some 3,000 Occupy protesters shut down the Port of Oakland for the evening shift.
(SFC, 12/13/11, p.A1)
2011 Dec 12, The Illinois House approved a package of tax relief for families and businesses, including big names like Sears and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, that threatened to leave the state. When fully phased in the cuts will cost state government some $320 million per year.
(SFC, 12/13/11, p.A11)
2011 Dec 12, In Utah some 4000-5000 migratory birds, eared grebes, were killed or injured after apparently mistaking a Wal-Mart parking lot, football fields and other snow-covered areas of southern Utah for bodies of water and plummeting to the ground in what one state wildlife expert called the worst mass bird crash she'd ever seen. A high-profile crash in Arkansas in January killed about 4,500 birds, mainly red-winged blackbirds.
(AP, 12/14/11)
2011 Dec 12, In Washington state 2 reconnaissance helicopters crashed during training near Tacoma killing all 4 people on board.
(SFC, 12/14/11, p.A8)
2011 Dec 12, Senior Australian naval officer Lieutenant Commander John Alan Jones (58) was convicted by a court martial of repeatedly spanking a junior female sailor to test her discipline and obedience.
(AFP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 12, Canada became the first country to declare it was formally exiting the Kyoto protocol, a reversal that will save it billions of dollars in fines. Canada had agreed under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce CO2 emissions to 6.0 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, but its emissions of the gasses blamed for damaging Earth's fragile climate system have instead increased sharply.
(AFP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 12, China executed Janice Linden (35), a South African woman, by lethal injection for drug smuggling after rejecting last-minute pleas for clemency from her government. She was convicted of trying to sneak three kg (6.6 pounds) of methamphetamine into the country in her luggage through the southern city of Guangzhou in 2008. Amnesty International says China executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined.
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, In eastern China a school bus taking primary students home slipped off a country road into an irrigation ditch, killing 15 children in Jiangsu province.
(AP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 12, A Chinese captain stabbed two South Korean coast guard officers, killing one, after his fishing boat was stopped for illegally fishing in South Korean waters.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Colombia extradited Ramon Quintero, a top Norte del Valle cartel trafficker, to the United States. His organization was accused of exporting more than 50 metric tons of cocaine a year to the US and Europe.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, International Criminal Court (ICC) member states, meeting at The Hague, unanimously elected Fatou Bensouda of Gambia as the new chief prosecutor for the main genocide and war crimes tribunal.
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, The world court (ICC) said it was referring Malawi to the UN Security Council over its refusal to arrest Sudan's Pres. Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the court for genocide, during his October visit for a meeting of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, The head of Iran's parliamentary national security committee said Iran will reverse-engineer the US drone it has in its possession, and is in the "final stages" of unlocking the aircraft's software secrets.
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, The Efrat settlement mayor said Israel's government has approved 40 new houses to replace trailers at the West Bank settlement, drawing criticism from Palestinians. The trailers at the site, known as Givat Hadagan, were put up without authorization.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Dozens of Jewish settlers broke into an army base in the West Bank and lit fires, damaged vehicles and threw stones at a senior officer, just hours after another group took over an abandoned building in a closed military zone on the border with Jordan. The settlers were reportedly protesting the planned evacuations of unauthorized settlement outposts.
(AP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 12, In Kenya an explosion wounded six people, including a high-ranking intelligence official, in the northern town of Wajir during celebrations of Kenya's Independence Day.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, In Mexico 2 students were killed during a clash with state and federal police at a violent protest that blocked a major highway in Guerrero state. Protesting students had hijacked buses and set fire to a gasoline station before federal police fired tear gas at the protesters and then shots rang out. Some 300 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college staged the protest seeking to persuade the state government "to meet their educational demands.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Mexican marines captured Raul Lucio Hernandez Lechuga, a founding member of the brutal Zetas drug cartel, in the city of Cordoba, Veracruz state.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Veteran PNG leader Sir Michael Somare (75) was reinstated as Papua New Guinea's prime minister when the Supreme Court ruled the election of Peter O'Neill was unconstitutional.
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, In the Philippines the House of Representatives impeached chief justice Renato Corona over charges his 15-member court had made a series of rulings that hindered government moves to prosecute ex-leader Gloria Arroyo. The proceedings will move to the Senate, where a trial will determine if Corona must step down.
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Mikhail Prokhorov (46), one of Russia's richest tycoons and the owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team, said he will run against PM Vladimir Putin in the March presidential election. Prokhorov made his fortune, estimated by Forbes at $18 billion, in metals and banking.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Saudi authorities executed a woman convicted of practicing magic and sorcery. The woman was arrested in April, 2009, and later convicted in a Saudi court. Religious police, who arrested the woman, said she had tricked people into thinking she could treat illnesses, charging them $800 per session.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 12, Syrians closed their businesses and kept children home from school in several parts of the country in a show of civil disobedience against the regime as a new and fierce round of clashes between troops and army defectors spread. Syrians voted in municipal elections even as violence raged in some parts of the country where security forces were pressing a deadly crackdown against dissent. Border guards intercepted 15 gunmen trying to infiltrate from Turkey. Two were reported killed in the ensuing firefight and others were injured.
(AP, 12/12/11)(AFP, 12/12/11)(AP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 12, In southern Yemen a protester was wounded in Aden when police dispersed hundreds of demonstrators demanding a secession of southern regions. A security official said 12 alleged Al-Qaeda militants plus two other inmates have tunneled their way to freedom from a prison in Aden. Al-Qaeda linked gunman fired on a military vehicle killing three soldiers and wounding 11 others near the southern city of Zinjibar.
(AFP, 12/12/11)(AP, 12/12/11)(AFP, 12/13/11)
2012 Dec 12, In California Darcey Greenfield, a former Los Angeles police officer, was arrested on charges of bilking people out of at least $3 million in a real estate investment scheme.
(SSFC, 12/16/12, p.A12)
2012 Dec 12, In Argentina the acquittal of 13 people accused in the disappearance of a young woman who was allegedly kidnapped and forced into prostitution for "VIP clients" spread shock and outrage across the country, prompting street protests and calls by political leaders to impeach the three judges who delivered the verdict.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Royal Navy Petty Officer Edward Devenney was sentenced to eight years in prisons for passing nuclear submarine secrets to British intelligence agents impersonating Russian spies.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, A rebel group that signed a peace accord with the government of the Central African Republic announced that it has taken three towns in the country's north, in a move that is intended to force the state to review the six-year-old accord.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Chinese religious officials said they have revoked the title of new Catholic Bishop Ma Daqin in Shanghai. He outraged officials by immediately dropping out of the government agency that oversees the country's officially sanctioned church.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Egypt's opposition alliance urged supporters to vote "No" in the referendum on a disputed constitution rather than boycotting, hours after the Islamist government forged ahead by starting overseas voting in diplomatic missions for expatriates. The full referendum was initially scheduled to take place on Dec 15, but in a last minute decree on Dec 11, Morsi ordered the voting stretched into another round on Dec 22.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said more than 100 countries have recognized a new Syrian opposition coalition. Fabius called the "Friends of the Syrian People" conference meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, "extraordinary progress." US and NATO said President Bashar Assad's forces had fired Scud missiles at rebel areas.
(AP, 12/12/12)(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Dec 12, German lawmakers in the Bundestag passed legislation ensuring parents the right to have their boys circumcised. The upper house, Bundesrat, was expected to also pass it.
(SFC, 12/13/12, p.A5)
2012 Dec 12, Guatemala released John McAfee from a detention center and put him on a plan for Miami. Authorities in Belize had sought McAfee for questioning about the November slaying of neighbor Gregory Faull.
(SFC, 12/13/12, p.A7)
2012 Dec 12, Honduras President Porfirio Lobo's National Party overwhelmingly and, many say illegally, approved the the dismissal of 4 judges who had rejected the president's plan to weed out corrupt police.
(AP, 12/14/12)
2012 Dec 12, Iran's deputy judiciary chief said the Islamic Republic has issued indictments against 18 unnamed current and former American officials on charges of involvement in "crimes against Iran." His remarks did not indicate that any of the men were present in Iran.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, In Iraq a suspected al-Qaida detainee tried to blow himself up inside a prison cell in Baghdad, wounding himself and six others.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Israel's paramilitary border police force in Hebron shot and killed Mohammed Suleima (17) after he brandished a gun that later turned out to be fake.
(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Dec 12, Japan’s Honda Motor Co said it will recall 871,000 vehicles that could roll away after the ignition key has been removed, including 807,000 in the United States.
(Reuters, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Kuwait's ruler named a new Cabinet that makes no major changes in membership and reinstates the finance minister who resigned earlier this year under pressure from opposition lawmakers.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan said he would formally ban students from smoking marijuana at school, making the Dutch capital the first city in the Netherlands to do so.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, In Northern Ireland protests began when the Belfast city council voted to limit the number of days the union flag is flown over city hall to about 20 a year.
(Econ, 1/12/13, p.50)
2012 Dec 12, North Korea launched its Unha rocket, named after the Korean word for "galaxy." The 3-stage rocket blasted off from the Sohae launch pad in Tongchang-ri, northwest of Pyongyang, and put a satellite into orbit.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Russia's President Vladimir Putin vowed to strengthen the country's economy and its military might and rejected what he described as foreign lecturing about democracy and attempts at foreign interference in the nation's internal affairs.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, Spanish authorities said they have arrested a Panamanian woman arriving at Barcelona airport from Bogota, Colombia, with 1.38 kg (3 pounds) of cocaine concealed in breast implants.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 12, A UN war crimes court at The Hague convicted Gen. Zdravko Tolimir, a Bosnian Serb commander, of genocide for playing a key role in the July, 1995, massacre at Srebrenica.
(SFC, 12/13/12, p.A5)
2013 Dec 12, The Obama adminsitration announced an expanded list of Iranian companies and individuals that it said it would target to block their trading activities around the world due to sanctions violations.
(SFC, 12/13/13, p.A11)
2013 Dec 12, US authorities said three Chinese nationals have been charged in two separate cases of trying to steal seed-technology, trade secrets under development in the United States.
(Reuters, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, USAID acting Mission Director Christopher Cushing said a decision to leave Ecuador by Sep 2014 comes as a result of Ecuador’s decision to prohibit approval of new USAID assistance programs.
(CSM, 12/14/13)
2013 Dec 12, US federal bus regulators said they have shut down over 50 motor coach companies in a nationwide crackdown on unsafe outfits.
(SFC, 12/13/13, p.A13)
2013 Dec 11, In Minnesota Keith Michael Novak (25) was put under federal custody following fraud charges in connection with the ID theft of some 400 members of his former Army unit in Fort Bragg, NC.
(SFC, 12/13/13, p.A17)
2013 Dec 12, In NYC Devyani Khobragade, India's deputy consul general, was arrested and strip searched for allegedly underpaying her nanny and committing visa fraud to get her into the United States.
(SFC, 12/18/13, p.A8)
2013 Dec 12, World stock markets extended losses after an apparent budget deal in the US Congress reinforced expectations the Federal Reserve will cut its monetary stimulus as early as next week.
(AP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, In Afghanistan a large bomb accidentally exploded inside a weapons depot in downtown Kabul, but no one was hurt.
(AP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, Australia's top court struck down gay marriage in the nation's capital, ruling that parliament must decide on same-sex unions.
(AFP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, Bangladesh's Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution of Abdul Quader Molla, an opposition leader convicted of war crimes, rejecting a last-minute appeal in a case that threatens to spark fresh violence ahead of national elections next month. Abdul Quader Molla was sent to the gallows at a prison in Dhaka late today.
(AP, 12/12/13)(AFP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 12, Britain’s Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), the body which sets MPs' pay, recommended an 11 percent pay rise despite a public outcry and PM David Cameron plus other top politicians rejecting the plan.
(AFP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, In the Central African Republic 27 Muslims were killed by so-called self-defense militias, known as anti-Balaka, in the western village of Bohong. Fighting and sectarian violence has killed 450 people in Bangui and 160 elsewhere in the country in the past week alone.
(AFP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 12, Congo and the so-called M23 rebels signed a peace agreement that will see the insurgent group demobilize its fighters and transform itself into a political party.
(AP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 12, India's ruling party slammed the Supreme Court for reinstating a ban on gay sex, taking an unexpectedly bold stance ahead of elections in the religiously conservative nation.
(Reuters, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, A senior Iranian nuclear negotiator said new sanctions by the US on Iranian companies and individuals violate the spirit of a deal made between Tehran and the West over its nuclear program.
(AP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 12, Iraq signed a $1.1 billion deal to buy 24 multi-role light fighters from South Korea. Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) said it would deliver the T-50IQ, a variant of its T-50 supersonic aircraft, to Baghdad between 2015 and 2016.
(AFP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, In Italy grass roots protests dubbed the Pitchfork Protests continued for a 4th day in cities and towns reflecting the pain of a continuing recession.
(SFC, 12/13/13, p.A2)
2013 Dec 12, Mexico's Congress overwhelmingly voted to open up the country's oil and gas sector to private investment in the biggest overhaul of the industry since it was nationalized in 1938.
(AP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 12, In North Korea Jang Song Thaek (67), the uncle of leader Kim Jong Un, was tried for treason by a special military tribunal and executed. State media accused Jang of destroying the economy for his personal benefit and blamed him for masterminding the 2009 currency revaluation that sparked rare protests in North Korea.
(AP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin used his state-of-the-nation address to defend conservative values, referring obliquely to his government's anti-gay stance as he chided the West for treating "good and evil" equally. Putin also made a new attempt to woo Ukraine after the EU and US stepped up efforts to pull Kiev out of its former Soviet master's orbit. He also announced a set of initiatives to crack down on Russian companies who register and pay taxes in offshore jurisdictions.
(AP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti, the highest religious authority in the birthplace of Islam, condemned suicide bombings as grave crimes, reiterating his stance in unusually strong language in the Saudi-owned Al Hayat newspaper.
(Reuters, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, In Spain separatist parties in the northeastern Catalonia region agreed the wording of an independence referendum on November 9, 2014, but the Spanish government said the vote was illegal and would not happen.
(Reuters, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, Syria's Western-backed opposition said it had invited Islamist fighters to secure its depots on the Turkish frontier after an attack by al Qaeda militants. Islamist rebels killed at least 15 civilians from the minority Alawite and Druze sects in the central Syrian city of Adra over the last 48 hours.
(Reuters, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, In Thailand protesters cut off electricity to the prime minister's office compound and demanded that police abandon the premises, piling fresh pressure on Thailand's government in a political crisis that has dragged on for weeks.
(AP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, Pope Francis said in the first peace message of his pontificate that huge salaries and bonuses are symptoms of an economy based on greed and inequality and called again for nations to narrow the wealth gap.
(Reuters, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 12, In Yemen a drone strike on a wedding convoy in Radda killed 17 people, mostly civilians. Two of the dead, Saleh al-Tays and Abdullah al-Tays, had figured in the past on Yemeni government lists of wanted Al-Qaeda suspects. On Feb 20, 2014, a Human Rights Watch report listed the names and ages of 12 men who witnesses said were killed by four Hellfire missiles.
(AFP, 12/13/13)(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Dec 12, American politicians agreed to supply weapons to Ukrainian troops.
(Econ, 12/20/14, p.111)
2014 Dec 12, A major storm that pummeled northern California and the Pacific Northwest with heavy rain and high winds and killed two people moved south overnight, prompting evacuation orders in areas prone to floods and mud flows.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, In New Jersey Derish Wolff (79), the former president and CEO of the Morristown-based Louis Berger Group, an engineering consulting firm, pleaded guilty to leading a conspiracy that reaped tens of millions of dollars by overcharging the US government for reconstruction projects overseas, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(AP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, In Afghanistan the Taliban detonated a roadside bomb, hitting a convoy of foreign troops and killing 2 American soldiers.
(Reuters, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, In Britain a system failure affecting air traffic control workstations was to blame for disruption to thousands of passengers coming in and out of Britain's biggest airports.
(Reuters, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, China opened a key section of a massive and ambitious plan to transport water from wetter central and southern parts of the country up to its arid north, including Beijing.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, EU governments agreed to ban the export of jet fuel to Syria from Dec 14, saying it was being used by the Syrian air force for indiscriminate attacks against civilians.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, Haiti’s President Michel Martelly said that he accepted all the findings of a report this week from a government-appointed commission, including its recommendation that the prime minister resign.
(AP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, Iran said it had agreed to extend temporary visas for 450,000 Afghan refugees for six months, lifting a threat to send them back home to a country facing attacks by resurgent militants.
(Reuters, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, In Iraq one person was killed by rocket fire in Kerbala where huge crowds of Shi'ite pilgrims have gathered for religious ceremonies. Mortar fire targeting a Shiite mosque killed 8 worshippers in Muqdadiyah.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)(AP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, Islamic State group militants shot down an Iraqi military helicopter, killing the two pilots onboard and raising fresh concerns about the extremists' ability to attack aircraft amid ongoing US-led coalition airstrikes.
(AP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, Striking Italian union workers marched through more than 50 Italian cities to protest government economic reforms that they say erode their rights.
(AP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, In Israel some 100 Palestinians demonstrated outside the Ofer military prison near Ramallah. Troops shot live bullets at their legs, wounding 10. In Hebron youths clashed with soldiers and were also shot in the legs. A Palestinian described as mentally unstable threw acid at a family of Israelis who gave him a ride in the West Bank before being shot and wounded.
(AFP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, A Saudi woman arrested for attending a soccer game at Jiddah’s new al-Jawhara stadium.
(AP, 12/15/14)
2014 Dec 12, Sierra Leone said it was banning any public Christmas celebrations as the spiraling caseload of Ebola infections continues to spread alarm.
(AFP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, A Sri Lankan air force plane crashed outside the island's capital, killing four and injuring one.
(AP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the UN Security Council that she has suspended investigations into alleged war crimes in Sudan's Darfur, criticizing the UN Security Council for inaction over the conflict-hit region.
(AFP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, Syrian rebels using improvised mortar bombs made of cooking gas canisters killed 311 civilians between July and December this year according to The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, In Syria the Islamic State group's police force beheaded four men in the central province of Homs for blasphemy.
(AP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 12, The US and its allies carried out 7 airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and 20 in Iraq in the past three days.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 12, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan signaled a fresh campaign against supporters of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.
(Reuters, 12/12/14)
2015 Dec 12, The Golden State Warriors lost to the Milwaukee Bucks 108-95 ending a 24-game winning streak for the Warriors.
(SSFC, 12/13/15, p.B1)
2015 Dec 12, In western Argentina at least 2 people were killed when a helicopter being used by film crew with the American television channel MTV crashed into a lake.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, Burundi residents awoke to find at least 39 dead bodies scattered in the streets of Bujumbura, a day after coordinated armed assaults on three military installations. 87 people were killed in an escalation of the violence surrounding the disputed third term of President Pierre Nkurunziza.
(AFP, 12/12/15)(AP, 12/13/15)
2015 Dec 12, China’s state media reported that the government will loosen some restrictions on the free movement of workers within the country, long stymied by registration papers that limit access to critical social services.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, In Egypt a Cairo court convicted two officers for the torture and murder of a detained lawyer in an eastern Cairo slum. National security officers Omar Mahmoud and Mohamed el-Anwar were sentenced in absentia to five years in prison each for beating lawyer Karim Hamdi to death last February.
(http://tinyurl.com/zrpejuw)(AP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius presented a landmark global climate accord. The 31-page draft text creates a system for ensuring countries make good on voluntary domestic efforts to curb emissions, and provides billions more dollars to help poor nations cope with the transition to a greener economy.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, In Germany riots started this evening started after hundreds of leftwing activists demonstrated against a rally by far-right protesters in Leipzig earlier in the day. 69 officers have been injured and some 50 police cars were damaged.
(AP, 12/13/15)
2015 Dec 12, In Germany Ivory Coast footballer Steve Gohouri (34) went missing. His body found in the Rhine river on New Year's Eve in the city of Krefeld. Gohouri was playing this season for German fourth-tier side TSV Steinbach.
(AP, 1/2/16)
2015 Dec 12, India and Japan signed agreements in New Delhi that could pave the way for Tokyo to supply New Delhi with military aircraft and high-speed trains, as PM Shinzo Abe promised to fully support India's efforts to become an economic powerhouse.
(AP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, Thousands of Iraqis protested against Ankara's deployment of troops to a base near the northern city of Mosul.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, In Iraq at least 6 border guards were killed when a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into an outpost near the border with Saudi Arabia in an attack claimed by Islamic State.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, Mozambique said the United States will grant it $1.2 billion in aid to fund projects in healthcare, food production and education under a five-year agreement signed this week.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, In northern Nigeria soldiers besieging the home of Ibraheem Zakzaky, the leader of a Shiite movement accused of trying to assassinate Nigeria's army chief, shot and killed at least 20 people in Zaria.
(AP, 12/13/15)(AP, 12/14/15)
2015 Dec 12, The first high-level talks between North and South Korea since an August agreement to end an armed confrontation across their border ended in Kaesong inconclusively.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)(SFC, 12/12/15, p.A2)
2015 Dec 12, In Poland tens of thousands, angered by an ongoing constitutional conflict, marched in Warsaw. They argued that President Andrzej Duda is breaking the constitution with the steps he is taking concerning the appointment of new judges to the Constitutional Tribunal, the top law arbiter.
(AP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, Russian police detained dozens of opposition activists who tried to hold a demonstration in central Moscow on Constitution Day.
(AP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, In Russia a fire swept through a home for people with mental illnesses, killing 23 patients and injuring another 23, many of whom were on medication or otherwise unable to walk in Alferovka, a village in the Voronezh region.
(AP, 12/13/15)
2015 Dec 12, Saudi women voted for the first time, in a tentative step towards easing sex discrimination in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom. Women were also allowed for the first time to stand as candidates in the polls for municipal councils, the country's only elected public chambers. Saudi Arabians voted 17 women into public office in municipal elections.
(AFP, 12/12/15)(Reuters, 12/13/15)
2015 Dec 12, Spanish police arrested Hector Albeidis Arboleda Buitrago, a suspected former combatant in the Colombian rebel force FARC, who they say carried out more than 500 forced abortions on female guerrillas.
(AP, 12/13/15)
2015 Dec 12, In Syria a powerful car bomb exploded near a hospital in the central city of Homs, killing 16 people and wounding dozens. Most residents belong to the same Alawite sect as Pres. Assad.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 12, Yemeni officials said a seven-day ceasefire will start Dec 14, the day before planned UN-sponsored peace talks in Switzerland. In southern Yemen 9 rebels and 4 pro-government fighters were killed in clashes late today.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)(AFP, 12/13/15)
2016 Dec 12, The US government sanctioned two senior Democratic Republic of Congo officials for human rights violations and targeting the opposition, a week before the president's mandate is set to end. The US Treasury announced it was targeting Deputy PM Evariste Boshab, also the nation's interior and security minister, and Kalev Mutondo, head of the national intelligence agency.
(AFP, 12/12/16)(Econ, 12/24/16, p.74)
2016 Dec 12, The US Supreme Court upheld the broad reach of a federal law prohibiting bank fraud, a ruling that gives the government more leeway to prosecute financial crimes. The unanimous came in the case of a California man who illegally siphoned about $307,000 out of a Taiwanese businessman's Bank of America bank account.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, In Castro Valley, Ca. Andrea St. John (59) was stabbed to death and her home set on fire following a robbery. On May 2 Luckie Dacany (36) of Stockton confessed to her killing while under custody for stealing a vehicle and alleged child molestation.
(SFC, 5/9/17, p.C2)
2016 Dec 12, FlightAware said 190 US flights were canceled today after 1,800 were grounded a day earlier, mostly at Chicago's two main airports.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, In New Jersey Adele Dunlap, the oldest person in America, turned 114.
(SFC, 12/14/16, p.A5)
2016 Dec 12, In Tennessee an early morning fire killed 4 children in Springfield.
(SFC, 12/13/16, p.A5)
2016 Dec 12, British PM Theresa May introduced an official definition for anti-Semitism in hopes of curbing attacks against Jewish people. The definition states that "Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Britain jailed Mohammed Ali Ahmed (27) and Zakaria Boufassil (26) for up to eight years for giving money to Brussels and Paris terror attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini when he visited Britain last year.
(AFP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, British and Greek authorities said they have dismantled an international ring suspected of smuggling hundreds of migrants to Britain and other European countries using falsified travel documents. 24 suspects were arrested last week in the Athens area, and another nine in Glasgow, Northampton and Manchester in Britain.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, A London judge sentenced Stefano Brizzi, a crystal meth addict, to life in prison with at least 24 years to serve for killing police officer Gordon Semple (59) during a bondage sex session and then attempting to cook and eat his body parts. Semple was last seen on 1 April and his dissolving body was found in an acid bath.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, China expressed "serious concern" after US President-elect Donald Trump said the United States did not necessarily have to stick to its long-held stance that Taiwan is part of "one China", calling it the basis for relations.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, In CongoDRC the Union for Peace in Central African Republic (UPC) rebels killed at least 32 civilians in the town of Bakala, where they had been fighting the Popular Front for the Renaissance of Central African Republic (FPRC).
(Reuters, 2/16/17)
2016 Dec 12, It was reported that Google is installing multiple servers in Cuba that will host much of the company's most popular content.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, The European Union imposed sanctions on seven Congolese officials it says illegally suppressed anti-government protests in September, when dozens of demonstrators were killed.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, French police hunted for four men suspected of stealing gold dust worth an estimated 1.5 million euros from an armored truck before setting cars ablaze near a major highway and fleeing.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) said 29 current and former staff of five financial firms, including four banks, have been arrested for alleged bribery related to the disclosure of confidential customer information.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, A cyclone barreled into the southeast coast of India, killing at least four people and bringing down trees and power lines as authorities moved tens of thousands of people from low-lying areas.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Italian energy company Eni said it would sell a 30 percent stake in an offshore Egyptian gas field to Rosneft. The Russian company will pay $1.125 billion for the holding in the Shorouk concession, which contains the giant Zohr gas field, and $450 million to cover past expenditures on the project.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, The International Monetary Fund approved two loans totaling $658.9 million for the Ivory Coast, while welcoming recent economic and financial reforms made by the country.
(AFP, 12/13/16)
2016 Dec 12, In New Zealand PM John Key stepped down. Key, a former currency trader, had lowered income tax rates, trimmed the national debt to 25% of GDP and partially privatized a batch of state utilities. The conservative caucus of Parliament chose Bill English (54) as the next prime minister.
(Econ, 12/10/16, p.42)(SFC, 12/12/16, p.A2)
2016 Dec 12, In Pakistan thousands of Sunni Muslims marking the Prophet Muhammad's birthday attacked a mosque outside Islamabad belonging to the Ahmadi religious minority, wounding several people.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Pres. Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines boasted about having personally killed criminal suspects when he was mayor of Davao City.
(SFC, 12/15/16, p.A3)
2016 Dec 12, Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo said she was determined to lead a campaign against President Rodrigo Duterte's deadly war on drugs and did not believe his assurances there was no plot to oust her.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, The Qatari government vowed that labor law reforms to make it easier for migrant workers to change jobs and leave the country would bring "tangible benefits" and urged patience from critics who say the proposed changes are inadequate.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Police in the Saudi capital said they had arrested a woman for taking off her veil in public and posting pictures of her daring action on Twitter. Several websites identified her as Malak al-Shehri, who triggered a huge backlash on social media after posing without the hijab in a main Riyadh street last month.
(AFP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, A Syrian military official in Aleppo said the "operation in eastern neighborhoods is entering its final phase", as fierce clashes were reported in the few districts still under rebel control.
(AFP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there had been a suspected gas attack in Islamic State-held territory near Palmyra, amid heavy aerial bombardment of the same area which together killed at least 53 people.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Turkey detained over 200 people including dozens of officials from pro-Kurdish parties and struck Kurdish militants in Iraq in response to this weekend's twin bombings claimed by a radical Kurd separatist group.
(AFP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 12, Venezuelans rushed to spend their 100-bolivar notes after President Nicolas Maduro's announcement they will be taken out of circulation to stop the contraband smuggling "mafias" along the Colombian border that he says hoard cash outside the country. An estimated third of Venezuelans have no bank account and keep their savings in the soon-to-be-worthless bills.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2017 Dec 12, Alabama voters elected Democrat Doug Jones in a narrow victory over Judge Roy Moore in a special election for a US Senate seat. The election cut the Republican margin in the US Senate to 51-49
(SFC, 12/13/17, p.A1)
2017 Dec 12, In California the Thomas Fire grew by about 2,500 acres overnight. It has burned 234,200 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, about 100 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, and has destroyed almost 900 structures including more than 690 homes.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, California and Washington state joined five nations (Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia and Chile) on the Pacific coast of the Americas to agree to step up the use of a price on carbon dioxide emissions as a central economic policy to slow climate change.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, San Francisco Mayor Edwin Mah Lee (b.1952), in office since 2011, died of a heart attack early today. Supervisor London Breed (43) became the acting mayor.
(SFC, 12/13/17, p.A1)
2017 Dec 12, Afghan intelligence officials detained one Afghan and three Turkish teachers linked to the Afghan Turk CAG Educational NGO (ATCE), an organization regarded with suspicion by the Turkish government.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, The annual Arctic Report Card released today warned that an increasingly warm Arctic, where temperatures rise twice as fast as the rest of the planet and ice melts at an alarming pace is the "new normal".
(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, In eastern Austria a large explosion rocked the Baumgarten facility, one of Europe's main gas pipeline hubs, leaving one person dead and stoking concerns about the continent's winter supplies.
(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, A Botswana transgender woman won a legal battle against the government to be recognized as female in a landmark victory for the rights of the lesbian, gay and transgender community. The conservative southern African nation of 2 million people has been reluctant to fully acknowledge the rights of the LGBT community.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture launched a program to ensure farmers comply with anti-corruption, environmental and child labor laws, after a highly publicized meatpacking scandal raised doubts about the country's food products.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Official data showed that British inflation has hit its highest level in almost six years, forcing Bank of England governor Mark Carney to explain the rise in an exceptional letter. The Consumer Price Index climbed to 3.1 percent on a 12-month basis in November compared to 3.0 percent in October, overshooting the Bank of England's 2.0-percent target rate by more than one percentage point.
(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling added another magic moment to her list of achievements as Prince William made her a royal Companion of Honor. The title is limited to 65 people "of distinction".
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, In Egypt prominent activist and opposition figure Islam Marei was sentenced to three years over his criticism of the government's decision to transfer control over two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.
(AP, 12/14/17)
2017 Dec 12, The European Union said it has suspended funding for Cambodia's 2018 general election because the vote cannot be credible after the dissolution of the main opposition party.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, French President Emmanuel Macron told dozens of world leaders and company bosses gathered at a climate summit in Paris that "we are losing the battle" against climate change. Major banks and companies vowed to accelerate the move away from Earth-warming fossil fuels as world leaders met in Paris seeking to unlock new cash for the global economy's shift to greener energy.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, It was reported that the owner of Westfield shopping centers is being bought by French property investor Unibail-Rodamco for $15.7 billion. Westfield, which started off in Sydney in the 1950s, is known for its 35 upscale shopping centers in major metropolitan areas, particularly in the US and Britain.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, German lawmakers extended the military's participation in missions against the Islamic State group and in Afghanistan, Mali and Iraq until the spring of 2018.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Germany's KBA automotive watchdog announced a recall of Volkswagen's flagship European sport-utility vehicles (SUV) with 3-litre diesel engines after detecting two illicit emissions control devices in the models.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, In Israel Rabbi Aaron Yehuda Leib Shteinman (b.1913), considered the leading spiritual authority for ultra-Orthodox Judaism, died. Hundreds of thousands attended his funeral ceremonies.
(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Nigeria's court of appeal dismissed 15 charges against Senate president Bukola Saraki related to alleged false declarations of assets, but it upheld three other charges against him.
(Reuters, 12/13/17)
2017 Dec 12, A Nigerian official said two teenage girl suicide bombers attacked the town of Gwoza, Borno state. One girl was shot dead and the other detonated herself killing four others.
(SFC, 12/13/17, p.A2)
2017 Dec 12, Two members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group were killed in an explosion in the Gaza Strip. The group said the men had mishandled explosives.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Puntland army Colonel Osman Abshir Omar, who also headed the region's bomb disposal unit, was killed after a roadside bomb he was defusing exploded.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Russia suspended its diplomatic presence in Yemen and all its staff left the country due to the situation in the capital Sanaa. Russia’s foreign ministry said some diplomatic staff will be working temporarily out of the Saudi capital Riyadh. The Russian defense ministry has said 41 of its troops have died in Syria. The St. Petersburg-based website Fontanka has said 73 private contractors have been killed fighting in Syria.
(AP, 12/12/17)(SFC, 12/13/17, p.A3)
2017 Dec 12, Saudi Arabia detained Sabih al-Masri, Jordan's most influential businessman and the chairman of its largest lender Arab Bank, for questioning after a business trip to Riyadh.
(Reuters, 12/16/17)
2017 Dec 12, Singapore launched an electric car-sharing service, the latest transport innovation aimed at encouraging people away from owning vehicles and keeping gridlock at bay in the space-starved city-state.
(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, In Somalia a US drone strike hit a vehicle carrying explosives some 40 miles southwest of Mogadishu.
(SFC, 12/13/17, p.A2)
2017 Dec 12, A South Sudan lawmaker said more than 170 people have been killed in fighting between rival cattle herders in central South Sudan in the past week.
(AFP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Yemeni security forces killed at least three suspected militants in a raid early today in the southern port city of Aden. A gunmen shot and killed a Muslim cleric in front of his home in Aden, the seventh killing of a cleric in the past three months.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2018 Dec 12, Michael Cohen (52), Donald Trump's former devoted lawyer and fizer, was sentenced to three years in prison, for lying about business deals related to dt, for lying about business deals related to Donald Trump.
(SFC, 12/13/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 12, The New York Times reported that US investigators believe that Chinese intelligence was behind the massive hack of data on some 500 million guests of hotel giant Marriott.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, The Wall Street Journal reported that a revised plan would play down China's bid to dominate manufacturing, and allow more outside competition.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Texas three police officers were wounded while serving a family violence warrant in Houston. Suspect Daniel Trevino was found dead hours later of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
(SFC, 12/13/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 12, Afghan provincial officials said government forces have abandoned the Shebkoh district of Farah province, leaving the area to Taliban insurgents after the government failed to resupply dozens of troops stationed there.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Antarctica two technicians performing maintenance at the US research McMurdo Station died while working on a building that houses a generator for a nearby radio transmitter.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Argentina's foreign minister said his crisis-ridden country desperately needed international investment, as he began a two-day visit to one of the world's richest nations, Qatar.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, British Conservative lawmakers forced a no-confidence vote in PM Theresa May, throwing UK politics deeper into crisis and Brexit further into doubt. May won the vote after promising lawmakers privately that she would quit before Britain's next national election, which is scheduled for 2022.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, China's police confirmed they have arrested award-winning photographer Lu Guang, who went missing in November while travelling in Xinjiang.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, In CongoDRC police fired teargas and live bullets for a second day to disperse supporters of opposition presidential candidate Martin Fayulu, killing three people in the town of Kalemie in the southeastern Katanga region.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)(AFP, 12/12/18)(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, Egypt released blogger and journalist Wael Abbas, known for standing up against police violence, after nearly seven months in detention. Abbas has been posting about police violence, torture and corruption on social media for more than a decade.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Egypt Coptic father Imad Kamal Sadeq (49) and his son, David (21), were killed at a construction site by a security police officer in Minya province.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, Eight European Union nations (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom) underlined their commitment to the Iran nuclear deal while urging Tehran to stop its "destabilizing regional activities" especially the launch of ballistic missiles.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In France a cousin of jailed Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov accepted the European Parliament's Sakharov human rights prize on his behalf, saying the director remained committed to winning the release of all "political prisoners" in Russia.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, A top French appeals court overturned the suspended prison terms handed to activists Cedric Herrou and Pierre-Alain Mannoni for helping migrants who entered the country illegally. The Cour de Cassation, France's court of final appeal, sent the case back to the Lyon appeals' court, which is expected to void the case.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, France arrested Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, a member of Africa's top footballing body, on war crimes charges in the Central African Republic.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Hungary rare scenes of chaos gripped the parliament as it passed a controversial judicial reform, as well as labor legislation that critics call a "slave law".
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Hungary passed a law to set up courts overseen directly by the justice minister, a move critics said would allow political interference in judicial matters and further undermine the rule of law.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In India Isha Ambani, the Ivy League-educated daughter of industrialist Mukesh Ambani, thought to be India's richest man, married Anand Piramal, whose father is industrialist Ajay Piramal, thought to be worth $10 billion.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Iran social media activist Vahid Sayyadi Nasiri, on hunger strike since October 13, 2018 to protest the denial of his right to counsel and inhumane prison conditions, died at the Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Qom.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Baghdad Nobel laureate and former jihadist captive Nadia Murad (25) called on Iraq to create a special team to investigate the fate of other members of her Yazidi minority kidnapped by the Islamic State group.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Israeli forces late today killed Salah Barghouti, a Palestinian suspect wanted in the drive-by shooting on Dec. 9 at a West Bank bus stop.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte told the European Commission he was lowering next year's target to 2.04 percent of gross domestic product from 2.4 percent to avoid disciplinary action by Brussels.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, In northeastern Mali several dozen civilians were shot dead by gunmen who raided an area near the border with Niger. Jihadists on motorcycles killed at least 42 people in a series of attacks on their nomadic camps over the last 24 hours in the eastern Menaka region.
(AFP, 12/13/18)(SFC, 12/14/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 12, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador signed an initiative that would cancel the controversial education reforms of his predecessor.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Myanmar several dozen journalists and activists held a rally in Yangon to mark the anniversary of the arrest of two reporters for the Reuters news agency who are among a group of journalists being honored by Time magazine as its "Person of the Year".
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In the Netherlands Sarah Papenheim (21), a native of Minnesota, was fatally stabbed at her home in an apartment building near Erasmus University, where she had been studying since 2016. A suspect (23) was arrested the same day.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 12, Nigerian opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar signed an election peace accord, a day after his absence from the official signing ceremony raised concerns about the conduct of the February 2019 vote.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Dozens of North and South Korean soldiers crossed over the world's most heavily armed border as they inspected the sites of their rival's front-line guard posts to verify they'd been removed.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Hundreds of Gazans attended the funeral of Ahmed Abu Abed, a four-year-old boy who died after being hit by Israeli shrapnel at a border protest last week.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, The Philippine Congress approved a request by the president to extend martial law in the country's volatile south by a year due to continuing threats by Islamic State group-linked militants and communist insurgents.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Romania dozens of people protested against poor air quality in Bucharest, which recently was ranked one of Europe's most traffic-congested cities.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Saudi Arabia representatives from Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Jordan gathered in Riyadh to discuss an alliance of the six countries bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. No final agreement was reached.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Slovak Defense Minister Peter Gajdos signed the contract to buy 14 F-16 military jets from Lockheed Martin as it seeks to replace Soviet-era jets.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Sri Lanka's former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe won a confidence vote in Parliament receiving 117 votes in favor in the 225-member legislative body. His October sacking by President Maithripala Sirisena precipitated a political crisis.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Sweden said it was freezing its support to UNAIDS until executive director Michel Sidibe is removed. An expert report has blasted the agency's leadership for systematically failing to address bullying, abuse and sexual harassment.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Thailand a local policeman was arrested for allegedly shooting and killing Malik Djamel, a French man, at a shopping plaza in Bangkok. Police said Senior Sgt.-Maj. Kantapong Huadsri had confessed to killing the man over an argument involving a woman, but that the dispute was not a love triangle.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, The Vatican said Pope Francis has removed from his group of close advisers two cardinals hit by sexual abuse scandals, including his economy minister, Australian George Pell (77). The other member removed from the so called C-9 is Francisco Javier Errázuriz (85) of Chile.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Sources said Yemen's warring parties agreed to reopen Sanaa airport in the Houthi-held capital, as Western nations pressed the two sides to accept confidence-building steps before the end of UN-led peace talks in Sweden.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2019 Dec 12, US President Donald Trump said on the United States was "very close" to nailing down a trade deal with China.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, The US Senate voted unanimously on a resolution that recognizes as genocide the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks a century ago. The following day Turkey summoned the ambassador from the US to protest the approval.
(AP, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, The US Department of Justice announced charges against 10 former NFL players over an alleged scheme to defraud millions of dollars from the league's health care benefits program.
(ABC News, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, Officials with Homeland Security Investigations announced the seizure of $250 million from convicted ex-Venezuelan national treasurer Alejandro Andrade, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for his central role in a $1 billion money-laundering scheme that allowed him to hide a fortune in overseas banks as well as luxury real estate in South Florida.
(Miami Herald, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, The Trump administration gave the go-ahead to new oil-drilling leases on federal land in 8 California counties, mostly in the Bakersfield area.
(SFC, 12/13/19, p.C1)
2019 Dec 12, San Francisco police displayed some $2.5 million in stolen property following their recovery after 30 search warrants were served this week.
(SFC, 12/13/19, p.A12)
2019 Dec 12, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) signed an executive order to restore voting rights to more than 400,000 nonviolent offenders who completed their sentences. Over the last few weeks the governor has issued 428 pardons, with his list including a woman who threw her newborn in the trash, a convicted child rapist, and a man who murdered his parents when he was a teenager. Bevin was defeated last month by Democrat Andy Beshear.
(AP, 12/13/19)(SFC, 12/13/19, p.A8)
2019 Dec 12, Louisiana sued the state of California over its decision to ban the import and sale of alligator products, saying the ban will hurt an important Louisiana industry and ultimately could hurt the state's wetlands. California banned alligator skins and meats in the 1970s but repeatedly issued exceptions that allowed sales. The most recent exemption expires on Jan. 1 of next year, and this time California's legislature did not pass another exemption.
(AP, 12/14/19)
2019 Dec 12, Danny Aiello (b.1933), American film and stage actor, died in New Jersey. His films included: "Bang the Drum Slowly" (1973),"The Front" (1976), "Fort Apache: The Bronx" (1981), "The Purple Rose of Cairo" (1984), "Once Upon a Time in America" (1984), "Moonstruck" (1987), "Radio Days" (1987), "Do the Right Thing" (1989).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Aiello)(SSFC, 12/15/19, p.A11)
2019 Dec 12, New US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette slammed New York state regulators for blocking pipelines that would bring natural gas from Appalachia to New England, but did not specify whether the Trump administration could do anything to push the projects forward.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, In Texas Heidi Broussard and her baby, Margot Carey, went missing in Austin. On Dec 19 her body was found in the trunk of a vehicle at a home in the Houston area. The infant daughter was found safe. Broussard's close friend Magen Fieramusca was soon arrested and charged with two counts of kidnapping and one count of tampering with a corpse.
(CBS News, 12/20/19)(CBS News, 12/23/19)(SFC, 12/25/19, p.A5)
2019 Dec 12, A Utah judge ruled that people born in the the territory of American Samoa should be recognized as US citizens.
(SFC, 12/14/19, p.A5)
2019 Dec 12, CVS Health Corp said it will make it easier for patients with advanced cancer enrolled in some Aetna insurance plans to receive broad genetic gene sequencing tests that can help identify the best drug or treatment for them.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, In Algeria thousands of people took to the streets in Algiers and other cities chanting "No vote! We want freedom!" as authorities held a presidential election that protesters view as a charade to keep the ruling elite in power. All five candidates that won approval to stand are former senior officials.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Argentine Foreign Minister Felipe Sola said Bolivian ex-president Evo Morales has arrived in Argentina where he will be granted refugee status.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Britain voted in a deeply divisive election that posed a historic choice between an imminent split from the EU or another referendum that could scrap the entire Brexit process. PM Boris Johnson's Conservative Party won a resounding victory that all but seals a divorce from the EU bloc. The Scottish National Party took back most of the districts it lost two years ago. Such a dramatic outcome, winning 48 of the 59 seats available in Scotland, will galvanize the party in its pursuit of the independence referendum leader Nicola Sturgeon.
(AP, 12/12/19)(AFP, 12/13/19)(Bloomberg, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, Costa Rica's President Carlos Alvarado issued a technical decree that will allow for therapeutic abortions in the Central American nation, despite opposition from religious and conservative political groups.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, The European Parliament told EU leaders that Malta's PM Joseph Muscat should resign immediately to avoid risks of political interference with the investigation into the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Germany pushed back on President Donald Trump’s moves to impose sanctions on the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, with Angela Merkel’s top diplomat rejecting outside meddling.
(Bloomberg, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, In India violent mobs in the northeastern state of Assam torched buildings and clashed with police, leaving two dead and 11 with bullet wounds, as protests grew over a new citizenship law for non-Muslim minorities from some neighboring countries. Protesters in Assam, which shares a border with Bangladesh, say the measure would open the region to a flood of foreign migrants. Tens of thousands rioted in three northeastern states. Authorities in Assam state shut down the internet and imposed a curfew. Neighboring Meghalaya state banned groups of more than four people from assembling.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)(SFC, 12/13/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 12, In Iraq an angry mob killed a 16-year-old and strung up the corpse by its feet from a traffic pole after the teen shot and killed six people, including four anti-government protesters.
(The Telegraph, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Italian police said they had arrested 13 people and dismantled an international crime gang that smuggled small groups of migrants from Greece to Italy aboard yachts.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Latvia's parliament passed legislation to take control over the Baltic country's two biggest ports in an effort to keep them open after US sanctions against a Latvian oligarch threatened operations.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Libyan authorities re-opened the capital's main airport, after closing it nearly three months ago amid heavy fighting between rival militias.
(AP, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Gen. Khalifa Hifter of the self-styled Libyan National Army declared a final, “decisive battle" to take Tripoli from PM Fayez Sarraj's UN-supported government. "The zero hour has ticked," Hifter said in a televised speech.
(AP, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, At The Hague lawyers seeking to halt what they allege is ongoing genocide in Myanmar slammed leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s defense of her country’s armed forces, saying that the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former pro-democracy icon chose to ignore “unspeakable" crimes targeting Muslim civilians.
(AP, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for an attack on a military camp in Niger that killed at least 71 soldiers earlier this week.
(AP, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, North Korea said the United States had nothing to offer it in possible renewed talks aimed at getting Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and missile programs after Washington said it was ready to take "concrete steps" towards securing a deal.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Russia expelled two German diplomats in what it called a standard diplomatic response to a similar move by Germany last week and said it hoped a dispute over the killing of a Georgian citizen in Berlin would not damage ties further.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, A fire on Russia Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier broke out during welding work at a shipyard in the Arctic port of Murmansk and spread quickly through the carrier's internal compartments. Two crew members were killed and 11 others injured.
(AP, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, In Saudi Arabia a fire broke out at a prison in Riyadh. Three inmates were killed and 21 others injured 21.
(AP, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, In Spain Carolina Schmidt, the Chilean president of UN climate talks in Madrid, told governments there could be no excuses for not reaching an agreement as the talks entered their final stretch.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Syrian officials and experts said more than 1,000 ancient relics and mosaics were saved from Islamic State group militants when staff at the museum of the city of Raqqa managed to hide them underground and in storehouses. Hundreds of other pieces that were hidden in Raqqa's branch of the central bank were discovered and stolen by militants.
(AP, 12/13/19)
2019 Dec 12, The body-folding, sharp-elbowed techniques of Thai massage was added to UNESCO's prestigious heritage list.
(AFP, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Turkey sent its accord with Libya on a maritime boundary between the two countries to the United Nations for approval, despite objections from Greece that the agreement violates international law.
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Former Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu established a new political party, Future Party, in a move that represents a challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party.
(AP, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, Ukrainian lawmakers extended a law offering special status to separatist-controlled regions in eastern Ukraine in accordance with agreements brokered by France and Germany.
(AP, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 12, The United Nations warned that famine threatens the lives of up to 5.5 million people in South Sudan, where droughts and flooding have destroyed crops and livestock, compounding "intense political instability".
(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2020 Dec 12, Thousands of President Trump’s supporters marched in Washington and several state capitals to protest what they contended, against all evidence, was a stolen election. Four people were stabbed in DC, and the police declared a riot in Olympia, Wash., where one person was shot. Vandalism targeted two historic Black churches during clashes between supporters of President Trump and counter protesters.
(NY Times, 12/13/20)(The Week, 12/14/20)
2020 Dec 12, President Donald Trump lost his latest legal challenge seeking to overturn Georgia's election results, with the state Supreme Court's rejection late today of a case from Trump's campaign and Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer.
(AP, 12/13/20)
2020 Dec 12, US President-elect Joe Biden pledged to rejoin the Paris climate accord on the first day of his presidency, as world leaders staged a virtual gathering to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the international pact aimed at curbing global warming.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it had approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine by pilots and air traffic controllers.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, It was reported that Oracle Corp., based in Redwood City, Ca., is moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas.
(SFC, 12/12/20, p.A1)
2020 Dec 12, California to date had 1,486,873 cases of coronavirus and 20,857 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 187,086 cases and 2,102 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 16,045,596 with the death toll at 297,789.
(sfist.com, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Ann Reinking (b.1949), Broadway star and Tony-award winning choreographer, died in Seattle. She was known as the star of such musicals as: "Sweet Charity" and "Chicago."
(SFC, 12/16/20, p.A5)
2020 Dec 12, A Virgin Galactic test flight ended prematurely as the spacecraft's rocket motor failed to ignite and it then glided down safely to its landing site in southern New Mexico.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Vanderbilt kicker Sarah Fuller made history again, when she knocked through an extra point during the Commodores' SEC matchup with in-state rival Tennessee. Last month, Fuller became the first woman to play in a Power Five game when she took the second half kick off against Missouri.
(The Week, 12/13/20)
2020 Dec 12, Charley Pride, described as "the first Black superstar in country music," died due to complications from COVID-19 in Dallas, Texas.
(The Week, 12/13/20)
2020 Dec 12, In Afghanistan an alleged airstrike late today killed around a dozen civilians in southern Kandahar province. The government later insisted that seven civilians were killed when the Taliban detonated a bomb in the area.
(AP, 12/14/20)
2020 Dec 12, In Albania demonstrators in the northern city of Shkodra damaged the left-wing governing Socialist Party's offices and injured a police officer, as part of ongoing protests this week after a fatal shooting by police enforcing a coronavirus curfew.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Austrian officials said authorities in recent days have seized a large cache of weapons and ammunition that were intended to be sold to far-right extremists in Germany. The seizure included 70 automatic and semi-automatic firearms, more than 100,000 rounds of ammunition and explosives.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, The Brazilian government unveiled its long-awaited national vaccination plan against COVID-19 with an initial goal of vaccinating 51 million people, or about one-fourth of the population, in the first half of 2021.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Britain's AstraZeneca said it has agreed to buy US drugmaker Alexion Pharmaceuticals for $39 billion in its largest ever deal, diversifying away from its fast-growing cancer business in a bet on rare-disease and immunology drugs.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, John le Carré (89), the best-selling British author of Cold War spy thrillers, including “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," died in Cornwall, England. Graham Greene described le Carré's best-selling novel “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" (1963), “the best spy story I have ever read.
(NY Times, 12/13/20)(Econ., 12/19/20, p.126)
2020 Dec 12, China pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by "at least" 65 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030, raising the target slightly from the country's previous goal of "up to" 65 per cent.
(South China Morning Post, 12/13/20)
2020 Dec 12, An Egyptian court sentenced nine police officers to three years in prison after their conviction for beating to death street vendor Magdy Maken (53) in November, 2016, at a Cairo police station. The verdict can be appealed before a higher court.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, In France police in Paris took 142 people into custody at what quickly became a tense and sometimes ill-tempered protest against proposed security laws, with officers wading into the crowds of several thousand to haul away suspected trouble-makers.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Indonesian police said they have arrested Aris Sumarsono, aka Zulkarnaen, on Sumatra island. He is believed to be the military leader of the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah network and has eluded capture since 2003.
(SSFC, 12/13/20, p.A6)
2020 Dec 12, Indonesia said US automaker Tesla will send delegations to Indonesia next month to discuss potential investment in a supply chain for its electric vehicles.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Iran executed Ruhollah Zam (47), a once-exiled journalist, over his online work that helped inspire nationwide economic protests in 2017, just months after he returned to Tehran under mysterious circumstances.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 12, Italy reported 649 new coronavirus-related deaths compared with 761 the day before. The daily tally of new infections was 19,903, up from 18,727.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Japan saw more than 3,000 new infections of the novel coronavirus for the first time in one day, as the number of cases continues to rise in the winter.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Mexico City's government said shops in the center of the capital and other busy areas would temporarily have to close at 5 p.m. to reduce the risk of coronavirus infection as authorities battle a surge in cases.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, A Russian nuclear submarine successfully test-fired four intercontinental ballistic missiles in a show of readiness of Moscow's nuclear forces amid tension with the US.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, In South Korea protests erupted as sex offender Cho Doo-soon (69) was released from prison at the end of his sentence for raping and seriously injuring a young girl in 2008, a crime which caused revulsion across the country.
(The Telegraph, 12/13/20)
2020 Dec 12, South Korea reported a record 950 daily coronavirus cases, exceeding the late February peak of 909, with the president calling the country's third wave of COVID-19 an "emergency".
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, South Korea's agriculture ministry issued a temporary nationwide standstill order for poultry farms and related transport in a bid to contain a wider spread of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, It was reported that Switzerland has frozen the financial assets of the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, following the violent aftermath of the elections in the east European country.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Jack Steinberger (99), who shared a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988 for expanding understanding of the ghostly neutrino, died at his home in Geneva.
(NY Times, 12/16/20)
2020 Dec 12, United Nations' Climate Ambition Summit was held on the fifth anniversary of the international Paris climate. At the virtual gathering UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said world leaders should declare states of "climate emergency" in their countries to spur action to avoid catastrophic global warming.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Pope Francis urged countries to work towards net zero carbon emissions and committed Vatican City - the world's smallest state - to reaching the target by 2050.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, Venezuela's opposition, led by Juan Guaido, concluded a "popular consultation" to repudiate President Nicolas Maduro's government after boycotting a Dec. 6 congressional vote. The opposition said just under 6.5 million people participated. The Maduro government has said 5.2 million Venezuelans voted in the election.
(Reuters, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 12, The bodies of 11 migrants, traveling by boat from Venezuela to Trinidad and Tobago, were found at sea. Nine more bodies were found the next day.
(SFC, 12/15/20, p.A4)
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