290 Oct 7, [Christian] Sergius, Roman soldier and martyred saint, was decapitated.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1488 Oct 7, Andrea del Verrochio, sculptor, painter, goldsmith, died at 52.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1492 Oct 7, Columbus changed course to the southwest. As a result he missed Florida.
(http://tinyurl.com/774v3)
1520 Oct 7, The 1st public burning of books took place in Louvain, Netherlands.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1542 Oct 7, Explorer Cabrillo discovered Catalina Island off the Southern California coast.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1571 Oct 7, Spanish, Genoese and Venetian ships of the Christian League defeated an Ottoman fleet in the naval Battle of Lepanto, Greece. In the last great clash of galleys, the Ottoman navy lost 117 ships to a Christian naval coalition under the overall command of Spain’s Don Juan de Austria.
(AP, 10/7/07)(www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1760264/posts)
1573 Oct 7, William Laud, English archbishop of Canterbury (1633-45), was born.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1582 Oct 7, This day was one of ten skipped to bring the calendar into sync. by order of the Council of Trent. Oct 5-14 were dropped.
(K.I.-365D, p.97)(NG, March 1990, J. Boslough)
1690 Oct 7, The English attacked Quebec under Louis de Buade.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1728 Oct 7, Caesar Rodney (d.1784), Delaware, judge and signer (Declaration of Independence), was born in Dover, Delaware. He led opposition to British laws for many years while serving in the provincial assembly. He was elected to the Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775. In 1777, he commanded the Delaware militia, and the next year he was elected president of the state for a three-year term. Rodney on horseback represents Delaware, the first of the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution, on a new .25-cent piece.
(HNQ, 2/24/99)(MC, 10/7/01)
1746 Oct 7, William Billings, hymn composer (Rose of Sharon), was born in Boston, Mass.
(HN, 10/7/00)(MC, 10/7/01)
1758 Oct 7, Paul Anton Wineberger, composer, was born.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1763 Oct 7, George III of Great Britain issued a royal proclamation reserving for the crown the right to acquire land from western tribes. This closed lands in North America north and west of Alleghenies to white settlement and ended the acquisition efforts of colonial land syndicates. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 guaranteed Indian rights to land and self-government.
(www.bloorstreet.com/200block/rp1763.htm)(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.M5)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.46)
1765 Oct 7, Delegates from nine of the American colonies met in New York to discuss the Stamp Act Crisis and colonial response to it. This “Stamp Act Congress” went on to draft resolutions condemning the Stamp and Sugar Acts, trial without jury and taxation without representation as contrary to their rights as Englishmen.
(AP, 10/7/97)(HN, 10/7/98)
1777 Oct 7, The second Battle of Saratoga began during the American Revolution. During the battle General Benedict Arnold was shot in the leg. Another bullet killed his horse, which fell on Arnold, crushing his leg. The “Boot Monument” sits close to the spot where Arnold was wounded, and is a tribute to the general’s heroic deeds during that battle. Although Arnold’s accomplishments are described on the monument, it pointedly avoids naming the man best known for betraying his country. The British forces, under Gen. John Burgoyne, surrendered 10 days later.
(AP, 10/7/97)(HNQ, 7/20/01)
1777 Oct 7, Simon Fraser, English general, died in the battle of Saratoga, NY.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Simon_Fraser_of_Balnian)
1780 Oct 7, Colonial patriots slaughtered a loyalist group at the Battle of King’s Mountain in South Carolina. Patrick Ferguson (36), English Major in South Carolina, died in the battle along with some 200 Loyalists. Patriot losses numbered 30 with 62 wounded.
(HN, 10/7/99)(ON, 12/07, p.7)
1792 Oct 7, James Mason (b.1725), American Revolutionary statesman, died at Gunston Hall Plantation, situated on the Potomac River some 20 miles south of Washington D.C. Mason framed the Bill of Rights for the Virginia Convention in June 1776. This was the model for the first part of fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and the basis of the first 10 Amendments to the federal Constitution. In 2006 Jeff Broadwater authored “George Mason.”
(HNQ, 2/18/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mason)(WSJ, 9/13/06, p.D10)
1800 Oct 7, Gabriel, slave revolt leader in Virginia, was hanged. Gabriel Prosser had mounted a slave rebellion.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A19)(MC, 10/7/01)
1806 Oct 7, Carbon paper was patented in London by inventor Ralph Wedgewood.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1815 Oct 7, Marshal Ney, one of Napoleon’s most trusted field commanders, was condemned to death and shot for having left the services of the King.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1816 Oct 7, The 1st double decked steamboat, Washington, arrived in New Orleans.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1826 Oct 7, The first railway in the United States opened at Quincy, Massachusetts.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1849 Oct 7, James Whitcomb Riley, poet, was born.
(HN, 10/7/00)
1849 Oct 7, Edgar Allan Poe, aged 40, died a tragic death in Baltimore. Never able to overcome his drinking habits, he was found in a delirious condition outside a saloon that was used as a voting place.
(AP, 10/7/97)(HN, 10/7/98)
1856 Oct 7, Cyrus Chambers Jr. patented a folding machine that folded books and newspapers.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1858 Oct 7, Lincoln and Douglas held their 5th debate in Galesburg, Ill., on the Knox College campus.
(SFEM, 10/29/00, p.8)(ON, 4/08, p.2)
1860 Oct 7, During the 2nd Opium War British troops on the outskirts of Beijing began to plunder the gardens of Yuanmingyuan (the garden of perfection and light), the imperial summer palace built by the Qing emperor Qianlong in 1709. Lord Elgin’s cavalry soon set fire and let the gardens burn for 3 days and nights.
(WSJ, 1/13/04, p.A8)(www.china.org.cn/english/features/beijng/31186.htm)
1864 Oct 7, General Phil Sheridan wired General Ulysses Grant that he had destroyed so much between Winchester and Staunton that the area “will have little in it for man or beast.”
(HN, 10/7/98)
1864 Oct 7, The USS Wachusett captured the CSS Florida in a naval engagement fought at the neutral harbor of Bahia, Brazil. Many of the Confederate crew were ashore at the time.
(AH, 10/04, p.15)
1864 Oct 7-13, Battle of Darbytown Road, Va.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1868 Oct 7, Cornell University was inaugurated in Ithaca, N.Y.
(AP, 10/7/97)
1870 Oct 7, French Minister of the Interior Leon Gambetta escaped besieged Paris by balloon, hoping to reach the French provisional government in Tours. Gambetta was slightly wounded when his balloon drops dangerously low over Prussian held territory, only rising to safety after the pilot jettisons the ballast.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1885 Oct 7, Nils Bohr, Danish physicist who won the 1992 Nobel Prize for physics and later worked on the first atom bomb, was born.
(HN, 10/7/98)(MC, 10/7/01)
1886 Oct 7, Spain abolished slavery in Cuba.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1888 Oct 7, Henry A. Wallace, (D/P) 33rd VP (1941-45) and founder Progressive Party, was born.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1893 Oct 7, In England the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta “Utopia Limited-or the Flowers of Progress” premiered and ran for 245 performances.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia,_Limited)(Econ, 1/3/15, p.20)
1896 Oct 7, Elijah Muhammad, US, leader of Nation of Islam, was born.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1896 Oct 7, Nicholas and Alexandra of Russia made a state visit to France and with Pres. Felix Faure laid the cornerstone for the Pont Alexandre III.
(WSJ, 6/26/96, p.A16)
1900 Oct 7, Heinrich Himmler, chicken farmer who became the head of the German Gestapo in Hitler’s Germany, was born. [see Oct 20, 1900]
(HN, 10/7/98)
1904 Oct 7, Isabella Bird Bishop (b.1831), English explorer, writer, and natural historian, died in Edinburgh. Her books included the 2-volume work “Korea and Her Neighbors” (1898).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Bird)(Econ, 10/26/13, SR p.10)
1907 Oct 7, Helen MacInnes, writer, was born.
(HN, 10/7/00)
1913 Oct 7, In attempting to find ways to lower the cost of the automobile and make it more affordable to ordinary Americans, Henry Ford took note of the work of efficiency experts like Frederick Taylor, the “father of scientific management.” The result was the assembly line that reduced the time it took to manufacture a car, from 12 hours to 93 minutes. Ford reversed the slaughter house production process of removing parts from a moving line to adding parts. Production more than doubled and the price of the Model T was reduced from $600 to $550.
(HN, 10/7/00)(SFC, 6/13/03, p.B4)(ON, 3/03, p.4)
1916 Oct 7, In the most lopsided victory in college football history, Georgia Tech defeated Cumberland University of Lebanon, Tennessee, 222-0 in Atlanta.
(http://gtalumni.org/Publications/magazine/spr98/div11.html)
1918 Oct 7, C. Hubert H. Parry, English musicologist and composer (Jerusalem), died at 70.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1919 Oct 7, Fritz Kreisler’s and F. Jacobi’s “Apple Blossoms,” premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1926 Oct 7, Emil Kraepelin (b.1856), German psychiatrist, died. He co-discovered Alzheimer’s disease along with Alois Alzheimer. The final edition of his Textbook of Psychiatry was published in 1927, shortly after his death.
(Econ, 5/26/12, p.81)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Kraepelin)
1929 October 7, British PM J. Ramsay MacDonald delivered a speech to the US Congress. He first spoke briefly to the House of Representatives and then gave a longer speech to the Senate. MacDonald was the first British PM to address the US Congress.
(NY Times, 10/8/1929, p.3)
1931 Oct 7, Desmond Tutu, South African Black archbishop who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, was born.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1934 Oct 7, [Everett] Leroi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka), playwright, was born.
(HN, 10/7/00)(MC, 10/7/01)
1934 Oct 7, Ulrike Meinhof, German Red Army member, was born.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1935 Oct 7, Thomas Keneally, novelist, was born. His work included “Schindler’s Ark,” the basis for the film “Schindler’s List.”
(HN, 10/7/00)
1935 Oct 7, The US Supreme court held its 1st session in its new building designed by Cass Gilbert. It was built on the site of an old Civil War prison. A new marble frieze at the Supreme Court included an image of Mohammed. In 1997 a Muslim group complained because Islamic tradition forbids images of the prophet.
(WSJ, 3/13/97, p.A1)(www.supremecourthistory.org)(WSJ, 8/27/03, p.B4)
1935 Oct 7, Himmler, Hess and Reinhard Heydrich agreed to build a concentration camp at Dachau.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1937 Oct 7, Igor Moiseyev (b.1906), founder of the Moiseyev folk-dance troupe, offered the troupe’s first public performance in Moscow.
(WSJ, 1/12/98, p.A20)(www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-141047738.html)
1938 Oct 7, Germany demanded all Jewish passports stamped with letter J.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1939 Oct 7, Harvey (William) Cushing, US neurologist, died at 70.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1940 Oct 7, Artie Shaw and his Orchestra recorded Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” for RCA Victor.
(AP, 10/7/97)
1941 Oct 7-1941 Oct 8, There was a massacre of over 3,700 Jews over a 2-day period near Svencionys, Lithuania. Vincas Valkavickas, a prison guard during the massacre, emigrated to the US in 1950 and was forced to leave in 1999 for concealing his wartime service.
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pjus/is_199904/ai_1291869401)(SFC, 6/15/99, p.A3)
1942 Oct 7, Maxwell Anderson’s “Eve of St Mark,” premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1942 Oct 7, US and British government announced the establishment of United Nations.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1942 Oct 7, A single salvo Katyusha rocket destroyed a Nazi battalion in Stalingrad.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1943 Oct 7, Weill’s, Perelman’s and Nash’s musical “One Touch of Venus,” premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1943 Oct 7, Approximately 100 U.S. prisoners of war remaining on Wake Island were executed by the Japanese.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1943 Oct 7, Radclyffe Hall (b.1880), English author of the lesbian classic “The Well of Loneliness” (1928), died. The book was the subject of an obscenity trial in Britain which resulted in all copies being ordered destroyed.
(AP, 9/29/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radclyffe_Hall)
1944 Oct 7, Field marshal Rommel got orders to return to Berlin.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1944 Oct 7, Jews several hundred prisoners assigned to Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau rebelled after learning that they were going to be killed. During the uprising, the prisoners killed three guards and blew up the crematorium and adjacent gas chamber. The prisoners used explosives smuggled into the camp by Jewish women who had been assigned to forced labor in a nearby armaments factory. The Germans crushed the revolt and killed almost all of the prisoners involved in the rebellion. The Jewish women who had smuggled the explosives into the camp were publicly hanged.
(http://tinyurl.com/9avn3)
1947 Oct 7, French troops in Indochina launched Operation Lea, to capture Viet Minh positions near the Chinese border.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1949 Oct 7, The German Democratic Republic of East Germany was established. Wilhelm Pieck (1876-1960) was president and Otto Grotewohl (b. 1894) was minister president.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(AP, 10/7/97)
1950 Oct 7, Mother Teresa (1910-1997), known in India as the “saint of the gutters”, received permission from the Vatican to start a diocesan congregation that would become the Missionaries of Charity order of nuns in Calcutta.
(AP, 9/26/04)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa)
1950 Oct 7, The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to establish a unified and democratic Korea.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1950 Oct 7, The United Nations General Assembly approved an advance by UN forces north of the 38th Parallel in the Korean Conflict.
(AP, 10/7/00)
1951 Oct 7, David Ben-Gurion formed Israeli government.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1951 Oct 7, Will Kellogg (91), founder of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, died in Battle Creek, Mich.
(ON, 2/05, p.11)
1952 Oct 7, Vladimir Putin, president of Russia (2000-), was born in Leningrad. He became aide to reformist Leningrad Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, then deputy mayor in 1994. Became President Boris Yeltsin’s deputy chief of staff in 1996; in 1998 became head of Federal Security Service, KGB’s main successor. Appointed prime minister in August 1999.
(AP, 3/14/04)
1952 Oct 7, The 1st “Bandstand” broadcast in Philadelphia on WFIL-TV. Dick Clark joined in 1955 as a substitute-host. [see 1956]
(SFC, 11/10/99, p.E3)(SFC, 4/15/00, p.D3)(MC, 10/7/01)
1954 Oct 7, Marian Anderson became the first black singer hired by the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
(AP, 10/7/97)
1955 Oct 7, Yo Yo Ma, Chinese cellist, was born in Paris, France.
(HN, 10/7/00)(MC, 10/7/01)
1955 Oct 7, Allen Ginsberg (29) his 3,600-word “Howl” at the Six Gallery at 3119 Fillmore. Kenneth Rexroth was the host. Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti were in the audience. Other readers included Philip Lamantia, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure and Gary Snyder. The Gallery was run as a co-op by poet Robert Duncan, his lover Jess (Burgess Collins) and another artist. In 2004 Jonah Raskin authored “American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and the Making of the Beat Generation.” In 2006 Jason Shinder edited “The Poem That Changed America.”
(SFEC, 8/29/99, p.D7)(SFC, 10/28/00, p.D1)(SSFC, 4/4/04, p.M2)(SSFC, 4/16/06, p.M3)
1955 Oct 7, The aircraft carrier USS Saratoga was launched at Brooklyn.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1956 Oct 7, Clarence Birdseye (b.1886), founder of the modern frozen food industry, died in NYC.
(ON, 8/12, p.7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Birdseye)
1957 Oct 7, A fire in the Windscale plutonium production reactor (later called Sellafield) north of Liverpool, England, spread radioactive iodine and polonium through the countryside and into the Irish Sea. Livestock in the immediate area were destroyed, along with 500,000 gallons of milk. At least 30, and possibly as many as 1,000, cancer deaths were subsequently linked to the accident. PM Harold Macmillan ordered the disaster hushed up.
(HN, 10/7/00)(Econ, 9/11/04, p.76)(Econ, 10/13/07, p.63)
1958 Oct 7, In Pakistan President Iskander Mirza abrogated the Constitution and declared Martial Law in the country. Field Marshal Muhammad Ayub Khan was named chief martial law administrator.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayub_Khan)
1959 Oct 7, Mario Lanza (b.1921), undisciplined opera singer and temperamental movie star, died of a heart attack in Rome. Born with a glorious Italian tenor, Lanza resisted all professional urgings. He first came to light while in the Army, then started singing publicly, first on radio, then in movies. He signed a contract with MGM studios, where he made such movies as “The Toast of New Orleans,” and “The Great Caruso.” His heroic bellow sold records and filled concert halls. Lanza put several teachers through hell because he would not learn to read music, and he began to believe his hype as the century’s greatest talent since Enrico Caruso (a thought which made Mrs. Caruso gag and Met Opera General Manger Rudolf Bing to ask: “Mario Who?”). He spent money as fast as he earned it, pampering himself through his life. He was fired by MGM because of his unpredictably in weight, ranging from compactness to obesity, often within a month’s time.
(www.lanzalegend.com/bio.htm)(www.nndb.com/people/994/000091721/)
1959 Oct 7, Saddam Hussein participated in a Baath team that ambushed Iraqi strongman Abdel-Karim Kassem in Baghdad, wounding him. Saddam, wounded in leg, fled country.
(AP, 10/17/05)
1960 Oct 7, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy and Republican opponent Richard M. Nixon held the second of their broadcast debates, in Washington, DC.
(AP, 10/7/08)
1960 Oct 7, “Route 66,” an American television drama, premiered on CBS and ran until March 20, 1964, for a total of 116 episodes. It starred Martin Miller (1931-2015) and George Maharis (b.1928).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_66_%28TV_series%29)
1961 Oct 7, “Bye Bye Birdie” closed at Martin Beck Theater NYC after 607 performances.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1963 Oct 7, President Kennedy signed the documents of ratification for a limited nuclear test ban treaty with Britain and the Soviet Union. Testing was outlawed in the atmosphere, underwater and in outer space.
(AP, 10/7/97)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F4)
1963 Oct 7, Bobby Baker resigned as Senate Democratic secretary after being charged in a 300-thousand-dollar civil suit with using his influence for personal monetary gains.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1968 Oct 7, The Motion Picture Association of America adopted its film-rating system (G,M,R,X), ranging from “G” for “general” audiences to “X” for adult patrons only. The system was fathered by Jack Valenti (1921-2007), head of the MPAA.
(AP, 10/7/97)(SFC, 1/21/04, p.D2)(SFC, 4/27/07, p.B9)
1970 Oct 7, Pres. Nixon in a televised speech proposed a cease-fire-in-place for Indochina and the negotiated withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam.
(WSJ, 2/5/96, p.A-19)(http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/keyevents/Nixon)
1975 Oct 7, Pres. Ford signed Public Law 94-106, a bill authorizing the admission of women to military academies.
(www.army.mil/women/newera.html)
1975 Oct 7, US decided John Lennon won’t be deported due to UK pot conviction.
(http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=618)
1979 Oct 7, Pope John Paul II concluded a week-long tour of the United States with a Mass on the Mall in Washington, DC.
(AP, 10/7/99)
1981 Oct 7, Egypt’s parliament named Vice President Hosni Mubarak to succeed the assassinated Anwar Sadat. He tolerated the Muslim Brotherhood.
(WSJ, 12/8/95, p.A-8)(AP, 10/7/97)
1982 Oct 7, The Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical “Cats,” featuring the popular song “Memory,” opened on Broadway at Winter Garden Theater. The show closed Sept. 10, 2000 after a record 7,485 performances.
(AP, 10/7/01)(www.broadwaymusicalhome.com/shows/cats.htm)
1982 Oct 7, Olof Palme was sworn in as Sweden’s prime minister.
(www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/swedhis/swed1980.htm)
1985 Oct 7, The United States announced it would no longer automatically comply with World Court decisions. This was in response to a June 25, 1985, World Court ruling that U.S. involvement in Nicaragua violated international law. The ruling stemmed from a suit brought in April 1984 after revelations that the CIA had directed the mining of Nicaraguan ports. The U.S. later vetoed two U.N. resolutions calling for compliance to the World Court ruling.
(HNQ, 6/9/99)
1985 Oct 7, Four Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean and demanded the release of 50 Palestinians held by Israel. 413 people were held hostage for 2 days in the seizure that was masterminded by Mohammed Abul Abbas. American Leon Klinghoffer was shot while sitting in his wheelchair and thrown overboard. A case was filed against the PLO and settled in 1997. The hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities and were turned over to Italy which let Abbas slip out of the country. Abbas was captured in Baghdad in 2003.
(SFC, 8/12/97, p.A4)(AP, 10/7/97)(HN, 10/7/98)(SFC, 4/16/03, p.A16)
1985 Oct 7, In Ponce, Puerto Rico, a mudslide followed Tropical Storm Isabel and killed at least 129 people in the island’s worst disaster this century.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Storm_Isabel_(1985))
1987 Oct 7, President Reagan’s advisory commission on AIDS was left seemingly in disarray as its chairman, Dr. W. Eugene Mayberry, and its vice chairman, Dr. Woodrow A. Myers Jr., resigned.
(AP, 10/7/97)
1987 Oct 7, In San Francisco eleven 49ers, including Joe Montana and Dwight Clark, went back to work in the biggest breach of the 17-day-old NFL strike. Of nearly 1,600 players on strike, only 145 have gone back to work.
(SSFC, 10/7/12, DB p.46)
1988 Oct 7, The Labor Department reported the nation’s unemployment rate for September 1988 fell back to July’s level of 5.4 percent, after going up to 5.6 percent in August.
(AP, 10/7/98)
1989 Oct 7, Hungary’s Communist Party renounced Marxism in favor of democratic socialism during a party congress in Budapest.
(AP, 10/7/99)
1990 Oct 7, The US House and Senate Democrats put together a modified budget proposal, following the failure of an earlier plan and the veto of stopgap spending legislation by President Bush.
(AP, 10/7/00)
1990 Oct 7, Grim Natwick (b.1890), American animator and film director, died. He created Betty Boop in 1930.
(WSJ, 12/21/06, p.D8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Natwick)
1990 Oct 7, Israel began handing out gas masks to its citizens in case of attack by Iraq.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1990-10/1990-10-07-CBS-6.html)
1991 Oct 7, Former assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal.
(www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/summpros.htm)
1991 Oct 7, University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill publicly accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of making sexually inappropriate comments in her presence when she worked for him, and urged the U.S. Senate to investigate her claims. Thomas denied Hill’s allegations.
(AP, 10/7/01)
1991 Oct 7, Leo Durocher, baseball coach and manager (Dodgers, Giants), died at 86.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9031586/Leo-Durocher)
1992 Oct 7, Trade representatives of the United States, Canada and Mexico initialed the North American Free Trade Agreement during a ceremony in San Antonio, Texas.
(AP, 10/7/97)
1992 Oct 7, Allan Bloom (62), psychologist and author (Closing of the American Mind), died.
(http://www2.selu.edu/Academics/Faculty/nadams/educ692/Bloom.html)
1992 Oct 7, The Ubykh language of the north-eastern Caucasus died out when Tevfik Esenc (b.1904), a Circassian exile in Turkey, died.
(Econ, 12/19/09, p.137)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_language)
1993 Oct 7, President Clinton ordered more troops, heavy armor and naval firepower to Somalia, but also announced he would pull out all Americans by the end of March 1994.
(AP, 10/7/98)
1993 Oct 7, Death claimed actor Cyril Cusack at age 82.
(AP, 10/7/98)
1993 Oct 7, In Pakistan Benazir Bhutto returned to power after general elections. Nov, Benazir Bhutto was re-elected to office. Murtazza Bhutto, brother of Benazir Bhutto, returned after 16 years in Syria to challenge his sister for the leadership of the ruling party.
(SFC, 1/30/97, p.A9)(WSJ, 11/5/96, p.A18)
1994 Oct 7, At an East Room news conference, Clinton expressed frustration over failures in his legislative agenda, blaming Republicans for “trying to stop it, slow it, kill it or just talk it to death.”
(AP, 10/7/99)
1994 Oct 7, Iraqi troops moved south toward Kuwait. Pres. Clinton dispatched a carrier group, 54,000 troops and warplanes to the gulf area after Iraqi troops were spotted moving south toward Kuwait. The Iraqis pulled back.
(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A8)(AP, 10/7/99)
1995 Oct 7, New York’s Central Park was transformed into a giant open-air cathedral as Pope John Paul the Second celebrated Mass before a flock of 130,000.
(AP, 10/7/00)
1995 Oct 7, A 7.0 earthquake killed 80-100 people on Indonesia’s island of Sumatra.
(WSJ, 10/9/95, p.A-1)(AP, 10/7/00)
1996 Oct 7, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp launched the Fox News Channel. It was set up by Roger Ailes, a former media adviser to three Republican presidents, to appeal to conservative viewers. TCI became one of the 1st cable operators to carry it.
(WSJ, 3/3/05, p.A10)(Econ, 7/9/11, SR p.14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Fox_News)
1996 Oct 7, The Nobel Prize in Medicine was won by Australian Peter C. Doherty and Rolf M. Zinkernagel from Switzerland for their work on how the immune system recognizes infected cells.
(SFEC, 10/8/96, A9)
1996 Oct 7, A fire was reported in Monterey County, Ca. It burned 25,000 acres and was later found to have been started by Jeffrey Alan Avila (35) in order to get some money by leasing fire-fighting equipment to the US Forest Service.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.A13)
1996 Oct 7, The effects of a Canadian Auto Workers strike against General Motors spread across the border as 1,850 workers were laid off at two U.S. parts plants.
(AP, 10/7/97)
1996 Oct 7, In Columbia authorities announced the use of Imazapyr, an all-weather herbicide, to help eradicate illicit drug crops.
(SFEC, 10/8/96, A10)
1996 Oct 7, In Croatia a spokesman for the UN transitional authority in Eastern Slavonia said 200 bodies were unearthed near Vukovar from the 1991 Serb occupation.
(SFEC, 10/8/96, A10)
1996 Oct 7, In Lisburn, Northern Ireland, the Irish Republican Army detonated two car bombs inside the British army’s headquarters, wounding 31 people. Two bombs of 500 and 1000 pounds exploded near Thiepval Barracks and near the base hospital.
(SFEC, 10/8/96, A8)(AP, 10/7/97)
1996 Oct 7, Ethnic Tutsi rebels slaughtered 34 patients in eastern Zaire. The government has given the 200,000 Tutsis a week to leave Zaire. The Tutsi Banyamulenge arrived into Zaire some 200 years ago.
(SFC, 10/10/96, p.A14)(SFC, 10/12/96, p.A11)
1997 Oct 7, Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee investigating fund-raising abuses, accused the White House of “a clear pattern of delay, foot-dragging, concealing.” Former White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes defended using the White House to raise Democratic money, telling the committee, “We played by the rules.”
(AP, 10/7/98)
1997 Oct 7, PepsiCo Inc. spun off its restaurant businesses that included Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC. The new company under David Novak was called Tricon until 2000, when it changed its name to Yum! Brands. By the end of 2004 growth and expansion in China produced sales of $9 billion. In 2007 Novak with John Boswell authored “The Education of an Accidental CEO.
(SFC, 2/18/98, p.B2)(Econ, 8/27/05, p.60)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yum!_Brands)(WSJ, 10/24/07, p.D10)
1997 Oct 7, In Columbia leftist guerrillas killed three villagers near San Jose de Apartado, a pilot peace community that had declared neutrality in the civil conflicts.
(SFC, 10/8/97, p.A10)
1997 Oct 7, From Mexico it was reported that at least 100 people were reported as disappeared in the state of Chihuahua, mostly around Ciudad Juarez, the base for Mexico’s largest drug cartel.
(SFC, 10/7/97, p.A15)
1997 Oct 7, In Spain a former naval officer from Argentina, Adolfo Scilingo, testified that as many as 1,500 Argentine naval officials had participated in death flights, during the 1976-1984 “Dirty War,” where people were hurled into the ocean.
(SFC, 10/10/97, p.D2)
1998 Oct 7, Robert McDonough (76) donated $30 million to Georgetown Univ. He made his fortune in the temporary employment business.
(SFC, 10/8/98, p.A3)
1998 Oct 7, The US Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard, the nation’s largest credit card networks, alleging that they stifled competition in the credit card industry. A judge later ruled that the Visa and MasterCard associations had to allow their member banks to issue other credit cards.
(SFC, 10/8/98, p.A1)(AP, 10/7/03)
1998 Oct 7, In Laramie, Wyo., Matthew Shepard (22), a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was found beaten, burned and tied to a wooden ranch fence. Police arrested Russel Arthur Henderson (21) and Aaron McKinney for attempted murder, kidnapping and robbery. Also picked up as accessories to the charges were Chastity Vera Pasley (20) and Kristen Leann Price (18). Shepard died Oct 12. Pasley was sentenced in 1999 to 15-24 months in jail for lying to police and destroying evidence. [See Oct 12] Henderson and McKinney were later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A3)(SFC, 10/13/98, p.A1)(SFC, 5/22/99, p.A11)(AP, 10/7/99)
1998 Oct 7, Ted Hughes, poet laureate of England, won the $16,930 Forward Prize for best poetry collection for his “Birthday Letters.”
(SFC, 10/8/98, p.E3)
1998 Oct 7, In Israel at the Gaza border Arafat and Netanyahu met with US Sec. Albright and agreed to an Oct 15 summit meeting with Pres. Clinton.
(WSJ, 10/8/98, p.A1)
1998 Oct 7, In Japan Pres. Kim Dae Jung of South Korea urged the 2 countries to work together.
(SFC, 10/8/98, p.A12)
1998 Oct 7, In Pakistan Gen’l. Jehangir Karamat resigned 2 days after advocating a direct political role for the military.
(WSJ, 10/8/98, p.A13)
1998 Oct 7, In Serbia Milosevic’s government began preparing for a NATO attack.
(SFC, 10/8/98, p.A12)
1998 Oct 7, In Russia the anti-Yeltsin protests turned out only some 600,000 people. Zyuganov said secret police records indicated that 36 million people turned out for the anti-Yeltsin demonstrations.
(SFC, 10/8/98, p.A12)(SFC, 1/27/99, p.A7)
1999 Oct 7, It was reported that American fighter jets had begun using non-explosive concrete bombs to destroy military targets in northern Iraq.
(SFC, 10/7/99, p.C20)
1999 Oct 7, In the US the 9th annual National Depression Screening Day was coordinated by the National Mental Health Screening Project.
(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A6)
1999 Oct 7, American Home Products agreed to pay up to $4.83 billion to settle claims that its fen-phen drug combination caused heart valve problems.
(SFC, 10/8/99, p.A3)(AP, 10/7/00)
1999 Oct 7, In Chechnya Russian planes bombed the village of Elistanzhi and 32 people were reported killed with 60 injured and 200 houses destroyed.
(SFC, 10/9/99, p.A10)
1999 Oct 7, In Iran the Asr-e Azadegan began publishing. It replaced the Neshat, which was closed by conservative clerics after 149 editions.
(SFEC, 10/10/99, p.A26)
1999 Oct 7, In Mexico the Nahuatl village of Acalana was buried under a collapsed mountain killing all but 30 people. As many as 200 people had lived there.
(SFC, 10/12/99, p.A11)
1999 Oct 7, In Nigeria it was reported that floodgates were opened on the Niger River at 2 dams, Jebba and Shiriro, to prevent Shiriro Lake from overflowing its banks. 400 villages were submerged leaving 300,000 people homeless and some 500 people were estimated to have been drowned.
(SFC, 10/7/99, p.C2)
1999 Oct 7, In the Philippines Typhoon Dan left at least 7 people dead and thousands of homes flooded. This was the 13th typhoon to hit the Philippines this year.
(SFC, 10/8/99, p.A14)
1999 Oct 7, Rwanda reported that army troops and Congolese allies had killed over 200 Rwandan Hutu rebels over a weeklong operation along the border where 4,000 Hutu rebels had been based.
(SFC, 10/9/99, p.A11)
2000 Oct 7, Three Israeli soldiers were kidnapped on the Lebanon border. Un peacekeepers made a film 18 hours later that showed Hezbollah guerrillas, the vehicles used and other evidence of the abduction.
(SFC, 7/12/01, p.A12)
2000 Oct 7, Palestinians tore up Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus and Hezbollah guerrillas captured 3 Israeli soldiers. Prime Minister Ehud Barak threatened to use force and to halt the peace process unless the violence stopped.
(SFEC, 10/8/00, p.A1)
2000 Oct 7, In Serbia Vojislav Kostunica was sworn in as the 1st popularly elected president of Yugoslavia. He was backed by an 18-party coalition.
(SFEC 10/8/00, p.A1)(SFC, 10/9/00, p.A10)
2001 Oct 7, A scheduled peace demonstration in NYC drew some 10,000 people. Anti-war demonstrations in SF and Chicago drew some 1,000 each.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.A11)
2001 Oct 7, The annual Emmy Awards ceremony was called off.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.G1)
2001 Oct 7, Herbert L. Block (b.1909), Washington Post cartoonist, died at age 91. He authored “Herblock: A Cartoonist’s Life” in 1993.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.A20)(NW, 12/31/01, p.109)
2001 Oct 7, The Al-Jazeera TV network from Qatar showed video footage of Osama bin Laden praising Allah for the Sep 11 terrorist attacks.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.G1)
2001 Oct 7, US and British forces struck 31 targets in Afghanistan. 40 warplanes, 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles, B-2 Stealth bombers, B-1 lancers, B-52s, F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets were used against air defenses, communication nodes and other large fixed target sites. Airdrops of food were also made. The Taliban later claimed that 8-20 civilians were killed in the attacks.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.A1)(SFC, 10/8/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 7, In Afghanistan the Northern Alliance moved its front line artillery and infantry units against the Taliban.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.A5)
2001 Oct 7, Hurricane Iris caused a mudslide in the Dominican Republic that killed 3 people.
(WSJ, 10/8/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 7, In Pakistan Muslim clerics called for a holy war to counter the attacks in Afghanistan. Fazlur Rehman, a top fundamentalist politician, was arrested. Most of the Arab world appeared relatively calm.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.A6)
2001 Oct 7, A Palestinian suicide bomber, Ahmed Daraghmeh (17), killed himself and 1 Israeli near the settlement of Kibbutz Shluhot.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.F1)
2002 Oct 7, The Nobel Prize for Medicine went to Sydney Brenner and John E. Sulston of Britain and H. Robert Horvitz of the US for their work on how genes regulate organ development and cell death.
(ADN, 10/8/02, p.A4)(SFC, 10/8/02, p.A2)
2002 Oct 7, In a somber address to the nation to support his action against Iraq, President Bush labeled Saddam Hussein a “homicidal dictator” and said the threat from Iraq was unique and imminent: “We refuse to live in fear.”
(SFC, 10/8/02, p.A1)(AP, 10/7/03)
2002 Oct 7, Space shuttle Atlantis carried 6 astronauts and a 14-ton girder for installation on the int’l. space station.
(ADN, 10/8/02, p.A4)
2002 Oct 7, In Bowie, Md., a 13-year-old boy was shot and critically wounded by a sniper at Benjamin Tasker Middle School. The shooting was linked to 6 previous killings and a card was found nearby that said: “I am God.”
(ADN, 10/8/02, p.A6)(SFC, 10/8/02, p.A1)(SFC, 10/9/02, p.A3)
2002 Oct 7, In Afghanistan new notes replaced the old multiple currencies.
(ADN, 10/8/02, p.A4)
2002 Oct 7, In Burundi 2 smaller factions of the main rebel movements signed a cease-fire aimed at ending the 9-year civil war.
(AP, 10/8/02)
2002 Oct 7, Israeli forces killed 16 Palestinians in Gaza that included a missile strike that killed 11. Hamas vowed revenge attacks.
(SFC, 10/7/02, p.A1)(SFC, 10/8/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/9/02, p.A1)
2002 Oct 7, Elections in Trinidad and Tobago were won by Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s black-dominated party with 20 of the 36 parliamentary seats.
(AP, 10/8/02)
2003 Oct 7, The US dollar fell to 7-year lows against the Canadian dollar and near a six-year trough against the Australian dollar.
(Reuters, 10/7/03)
2003 Oct 7, California voters recalled Gov. Davis. Among the replacement candidates, Arnold Schwarzenegger won with 3.74 million votes or 49%. Propositions 53 on racial privacy and 54 on state infrastructure funding were defeated.
(AP, 10/8/03)(SFC, 10/8/03, p.A1)(SFC, 10/9/03, p.A15)
2003 Oct 7, Three scientists who worked separately to explain the nature of matter at extremely low temperatures won the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physics. Russians Vitaly Ginzburg (87), Alexei Abrikosov (75) and British-born Anthony Leggett (65), worked on theories that led to the development of magnetic imaging scanners.
(Reuters, 10/7/03)(SFC, 10/8/03, p.A2)
2003 Oct 7, A £4bn deal to create a single company to run ITV, Britain’s only fully commercial national TV network, was given the go-ahead by the government, heralding a new era in commercial television.
(http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1057710,00.html)
2003 Oct 7, Israel “Izzy” Asper (71), the colorful, controversial, jazz-loving founder of Canada’s largest newspaper publisher, died. He created CanWest Capital, Western Canada’s 1st merchant bank and founded television station CKND. He bought out Toronto-based Global TV and turned it into a national network, CanWest Global Comm.
(AP, 10/8/03)(SFC, 10/11/03, p.A19)
2003 Oct 7, In southern India an overloaded ferry carrying 50 people capsized in the storm-tossed Krishna River, killing at least 18 passengers.
(AP, 10/7/03)
2003 Oct 7, In Bali southeast Asian leaders from 10 ASEAN nations signed a landmark accord that would pull together their disparate region into a European-style economic community in less than two decades.
(AP, 10/7/03)
2003 Oct 7, Anerood Jugnauth (b.1930) became president of Mauritius.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anerood_Jugnauth)
2003 Oct 7, A ferry hit a bridge in eastern Nigeria and capsized. Dozens were believed dead.
(AP, 10/11/03)
2003 Oct 7, Yasser Arafat swore in new Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and a skeleton emergency Cabinet.
(AP, 10/7/03)
2003 Oct 7, In the Philippines a detained Muslim terror suspect grabbed a guard’s rifle and opened fire at police headquarters in Manila, killing three officers and wounding three others before he was fatally shot.
(AP, 10/7/03)
2003 Oct 7, Turkey’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to allow Turkish troops to be sent to Iraq.
(AP, 10/7/04)
2004 Oct 7, Austria’s Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize for Literature for novels and plays that depict violence against women, explore sexuality and condemn far-right politics in Europe. Her books included “The Piano Teacher” (1988), which was adopted for a 2001 film.
(AP, 10/7/04)(SFC, 10/8/04, p.A4)
2004 Oct 7, Pres. Bush and VP Dick Cheney conceded that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the Iraq war debate to a new issue, whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing a UN oil-for-food program.
(AP, 10/7/05)
2004 Oct 7, US President George W. Bush told Chinese President Hu Jintao in a phone conversation that he supports reunifying Taiwan with the mainland but warned against “any unilateral attempt” to do so.
(AFP, 10/7/04)
2004 Oct 7, It was reported that municipal tax shelters would cost the US government an estimated $4.4 billion in uncollected taxes for fiscal year 2004.
(WSJ, 10/7/04, p.A1)
2004 Oct 7, US House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called on Texas Rep. Tom DeLay to step down or be ousted after his 3rd rebuke from the ethics committee in a week.
(SFC, 10/8/04, p.A3)
2004 Oct 7, Light crude oil for November closed in NYC at a record $52.67 per barrel.
(WSJ, 10/8/04, p.C1)
2004 Oct 7, An Asia-Europe forum accepted Myanmar and 12 other new members ahead of a summit strained by Yangon’s human rights record. ASEM comprises 39 members: 25 from Europe, 13 from Asia and the European Commission.
(AP, 10/7/04)
2004 Oct 7, Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihanouk (81) abdicated due to poor health.
(SFC, 10/7/04, p.A9)
2004 Oct 7, A car bomb at Egypt’s Taba Hilton killed 34 people on the last day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The attack was quickly followed by two more car bombings outside beach-bungalow camps south of Taba. The next day Israeli officials said they believe al-Qaida was probably behind 3 suicide car bomb attacks targeting Red Sea resorts filled with Israeli tourists. It was later reported that all 4 bombers who attacked the resorts escaped on foot minutes before their vehicles exploded.
(AP, 10/8/04)(SFC, 10/8/04, p.A1)(AP, 10/13/04)(AP, 11/12/10)
2004 Oct 7, In Ethiopia British PM Tony Blair spoke before the Africa Commission and warned that poverty and instability in Africa is providing a fertile breeding ground for terror and criminal organizations.
(AP, 10/7/04)
2004 Oct 7, In Haiti 2 beheaded bodies, one wrapped in tires and set ablaze, turned up Port-au-Prince.
(AP, 10/8/04)
2004 Oct 7, US authorities, meanwhile, raised the security alert in the heavily guarded Green Zone after an improvised bomb was found in front of a restaurant there. 2 American soldiers were killed and two others were wounded in separate attacks involving roadside bombs.
(AP, 10/7/04)
2004 Oct 7, In Kashmir 4 Islamic militants were killed by Indian forces while rebels killed a paramilitary soldier and critically wounded a pro-India political activist.
(AP, 10/7/04)
2004 Oct 7, In Pakistan 2 bombs planted in a car and motorcycle exploded at a gathering of Sunni Muslim radicals in Multan, killing at least 39 people and wounding about 100 others. Authorities in response banned all political and religious meetings except Friday Prayer. In 2006 Irfan Ali Shah was found guilty of masterminding the bombing in Multan.
(AP, 10/7/04)(WSJ, 10/7/04, p.A1)(NYT, 10/8/04, p.A5)(AP, 9/1/06)
2004 Oct 7, Two Palestinian boys, ages 15 and 14, were killed in an Israeli missile strike.
(AP, 10/7/04)
2004 Oct 7, In Poland organizers of the 5th annual erotic fair in Warsaw said they would defy an order from the mayor’s office and go ahead and stage a “test” for the woman who can carry out a sex act with as many men as possible.
(AP, 10/8/04)
2005 Oct 7, The former Tanforan Park Shopping Center in San Bruno, Ca., was scheduled to re-open as “The Shops of Tanforan” following a 2-year renovation.
(SFC, 10/6/05, p.B1)
2005 Oct 7, Mohamed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for their drive to curb the spread of atomic weapons by using diplomacy to resolve standoffs with Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programs.
(AP, 10/7/05)
2005 Oct 7, The Senate voted to give President Bush $50 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and US military efforts against terrorism, money that would push total spending for the operations beyond $350 billion.
(AP, 10/7/05)
2005 Oct 7, Jimmy Massey, a former U.S. Marine in Iraq, alleged that his battalion committed atrocities against Iraqi civilians during the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, including shooting unarmed protesters. He detailed the allegations in his book “Kill! Kill! Kill!”, written with the French journalist Natasha Saulnier and published in France.
(AP, 10/7/05)
2005 Oct 7, John Rigas and his son, founders of bankrupt Adelphia Communications, were indicted for failure to pay some $300 million in taxes.
(SFC, 10/8/05, p.C1)
2005 Oct 7, California’s Gov. Schwarzenegger signed legislation to allow local governments to regulate certain breeds of dogs.
(SFC, 10/8/05, p.A11)
2005 Oct 7, Charles Rocket (56), actor and comedian, died of apparent suicide near his home in Connecticut. Rocket was a cast member of Saturday Night Live during the 1980-81 season.
(SFC, 10/18/05, p.B4)
2005 Oct 7, In Brazil former security guard Deusimar Neves Queiroz, a suspect in one of the world’s biggest bank robberies, was arrested after his sister-in-law tipped off police to his alleged involvement.
(AP, 10/8/05)
2005 Oct 7, Reckitt Benckiser PLC announced it has agreed to buy the consumer healthcare division of Boots Group PLC for 1.9 billion pounds ($3.4 billion).
(AP, 10/7/05)
2005 Oct 7, At least seven Iraqi civilians were killed in shootings around the city, and at least two bodies were found dumped in the capital.
(AP, 10/7/05)
2005 Oct 7, In Iraq insurgents killed Haj Abdul Bajid Ahmed Al-Jibori, a member of the local district council, in a drive-by shooting southwest of the northern city of Kirkuk. West of Baghdad, a drive-by shooting killed police Capt. Haqi Ismael, who worked with the Ministry of Interior.
(AP, 10/8/05)
2005 Oct 7, In Belfast, Northern Ireland, police and secret service agents arrested Sean Garland (71) and 6 accomplices of an IRA splinter group for conspiring with North Korea to distribute counterfeit $100 bills.
(WSJ, 10/12/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 7, In eastern Pakistan assailants with assault rifles attacked a mosque belonging to a small Muslim sect, killing at least eight people and wounding 19.
(AP, 10/7/05)
2005 Oct 7, Palestinian police arrested 30 suspected car thieves and drug dealers in a high-profile crackdown on crime in this West Bank town.
(AP, 10/7/05)
2005 Oct 7, Philippine authorities said they had started an investigation to unmask opposition figures suspected of involvement in the theft of classified US documents in a widening spy scandal. Leandro Aragoncillo, an FBI analyst in New Jersey, was suspected of passing intelligence to the Philippines.
(AP, 10/7/05)(SFC, 10/7/05, p.A11)
2005 Oct 7, Russia test-launched a collapsible mini-spacecraft, which is designed to carry cargo and even passengers from the international space station to Earth.
(AP, 10/7/05)
2005 Oct 7, Serbia’s war crimes prosecutors filed charges against five Serb paramilitaries who appeared in a video showing the execution of six Srebrenica Muslims.
(AP, 10/7/05)
2005 Oct 7, The Sudanese government agreed for the first time to allow Ugandan troops to pursue members of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in all parts of southern Sudan.
(AP, 10/12/05)
2005 Oct 7-2005 Oct 8, More than 330 school children in western Ukraine were hospitalized with food poisoning, including four who were in critical condition. A preliminary investigation showed that the source of infection as a dysentery bacteria in kefir, a popular drink made of fermented milk.
(AP, 10/8/05)
2006 Oct 7, The NY Yankees were eliminated from the first round of the AL playoffs, losing to Detroit 8-3 in Game 4. It was the second straight year New York lost in the opening round.
(AP, 10/8/06)
2006 Oct 7, In Virginia the Bush family christened the USS George H.W. Bush, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier named after the 82-year-old former president.
(AP, 10/7/06)
2006 Oct 7, Michelle Gardner-Quinn (21), a Univ. of Vermont senior from Arlington, Va., was reported missing. After chasing leads for nearly a week, police investigating her disappearance got a break when a group of hikers spotted a body in a rocky ravine. A suspect, Brian Rooney (36), was arrested Oct 13 on unrelated charges of sex abuse in two other Vermont counties. In 2008 Rooney was convicted of murder.
(AP, 10/14/06)(AP, 5/22/08)
2006 Oct 7, In Colorado the new 146,000-square-foot Denver Art Museum opened to the public. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind.
(SFC, 10/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 7, Fleet Week in SF featured a waterfront parade of US and Canadian ships as well as an air show. The 2-day Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival opened in Golden Gate Park.
(SFC, 10/7/06, p.B1)
2006 Oct 7, In northern Afghanistan 2 German journalists working for the country’s national broadcaster and traveling on their own were killed by gunmen, the first foreign journalists murdered here since late 2001. In southern Afghanistan a NATO soldier from Canada was killed in an attack by militants who exploded a roadside bomb and fired on a military patrol. In eastern Afghanistan the US-led coalition and Afghan forces killed five suspected insurgents in a clash in Paktika province.
(AP, 10/7/06)(Reuters, 10/7/06)
2006 Oct 7, In France the press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders and the northwest town of Bayeux unveiled a memorial to some 2,000 journalists and other media workers killed in the line of duty around the world since World War II.
(AP, 10/7/06)
2006 Oct 7, India’s army killed five militants as they tried to sneak into the Indian portion of Kashmir from Pakistan. Two soldiers were also killed in the gunbattle. The head of a man from Gund Brath village, abducted the previous day, was found on a road in nearby Sopore town. The body was recovered in a different part of the town. A note tied to the man’s head that said he was beheaded because he allegedly worked as an informer for Indian security forces.
(AP, 10/8/06)
2006 Oct 7, In northern Iraq a suicide bomber rammed a police checkpoint with an explosives-laden vehicle in Tal Afar, killing 14 people, including some who died when their homes collapsed in the blast. More than two dozen people died in violence around the country. 7 bullet-riddled bodies were found in Baghdad. In two raids in the province of Diyala, Iraqi forces killed two al-Qaida suspects and captured 40. 2 US soldiers were killed in Iraq.
(AP, 10/7/06)(AP, 10/8/06)
2006 Oct 7, Latvians turned out in their droves to choose the 100 men and women who will make their laws for the next four years in the first general election since the Baltic state joined the EU. Latvia’s PM Aigars Kalvitis pledged to continue stimulating economic growth if his centre-right government was re-elected.
(AFP, 10/7/06)(Reuters, 10/7/06)
2006 Oct 7, Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda met President Olusegun Obasanjo for talks on plans to manufacture cheap software in Nigeria, fight HIV/AIDS and alleviate poverty.
(AP, 10/8/06)
2006 Oct 7, In Poland thousands marched through the streets of Warsaw, calling for new elections and the ouster of the government after weeks of political turmoil.
(AP, 10/7/06)
2006 Oct 7, Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist, was shot to death, her body discovered in an elevator in her apartment building in Moscow. She was known for her critical coverage of the war in Chechnya. Politkovskaya, shot to death in an apparent contract killing, was about to publish a story about torture and abductions in Chechnya. In 2007 Random House published her diaries under the title: “A Russian Diary.” In 2008 Russian investigators named Rustam Makhmudov (34 of Chechnya as the executor of the murder. Makhmudov was still at large. In 2008 Prosecutors charged Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former police officer, and 2 brothers from Chechnya, Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov, with involvement in the murder.
(AP, 10/8/06)(Econ, 10/14/06, p.91)(Econ, 4/7/07, p.82)(WSJ, 5/13/08, p.A8)(SFC, 6/19/08, p.A9)
2006 Oct 7, In Somalia dozens of people protested against an Islamic militia that has seized much of southern Somalia, a day after the group appointed a new administration in Kismayo, the country’s third largest city.
(AP, 10/7/06)
2006 Oct 7, Sudanese soldiers crossed the border into eastern Chad to fight a group of Darfur rebels, leaving more than 300 people injured.
(AP, 10/8/06)
2006 Oct 7, In Caracas, Venezuela, thousands marched in the biggest show of public support yet for Manuel Rosales, the main opposition presidential candidate, who pledged to undo what he called the ills of President Hugo Chavez’s government.
(AP, 10/8/06)
2006 Oct 7, In central Vietnam a boat carrying about 30 schoolchildren capsized on a river, leaving one boy dead and 18 others missing and feared dead.
(AP, 10/8/06)
2007 Oct 7, Chad Schieber (35), a Michigan police officer, died and dozens of others needed medical care while running the Chicago Marathon as record heat and smothering humidity forced race organizers to shut down the course midway through the event. Kenya’s Patrick Ivuti won the Chicago Marathon by a fraction of a second; an additional 250 runners were taken to hospitals because of heat-related ailments.
(AP, 10/8/07)(AP, 10/7/08)
2007 Oct 7, In Crandon, Wisconsin, Tyler Peterson (20), an off-duty sheriff’s deputy, killed six young people and critically wounded another, before he was shot to death, during a homecoming weekend gathering. Relatives of the victims said the rampage may have been fueled by a romantic dispute.
(AP, 10/8/07)
2007 Oct 7, A Cessna 208 Grand Caravan crashed in the Cascade Mountains after it left Star, Idaho, near Boise, en route to Shelton, Wash., northwest of Olympia. 9 skydivers and the pilot were killed. Searchers found the wreckage the next day.
(AP, 10/9/07)
2007 Oct 7, Douglas Yearley (b.1936), former CEO of Phelps Dodge Corp. (1989-2000), died.
(WSJ, 10/13/07, p.A7)(http://tinyurl.com/3ctzg3)
2007 Oct 7, In eastern Afghanistan 16 militants fighting under a wanted Uzbek warlord with a $200,000 bounty on his head were killed in airstrikes. Afghanistan executed 15 inmates by gunfire at its main prison outside Kabul, carrying out the death penalty for the first time in more than three years.
(AP, 10/8/07)
2007 Oct 7, Tropical storm Krosa drenched China’s southeast coast after killing five people on Taiwan and prompting the mainland to evacuate more than 1 million people.
(AP, 10/7/07)
2007 Oct 7, President of Ichkeria Dokka Umarov abolished the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and its presidency and proclaimed an Emirate in the Caucasus, an al-Qaida-linked insurgency, declaring himself its Emir.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasus_Emirate)(Econ, 7/4/15, p.42)
2007 Oct 7, Costa Ricans appeared to narrowly vote in favor of joining the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the US, and President Oscar Arias declared victory for the pact.
(AP, 10/8/07)
2007 Oct 7, Thousands of angry demonstrators destroyed the regional headquarters of Egypt’s ruling party in El Arish, demanding government protection from lawlessness after a downtown shootout between Bedouin tribesmen and local residents.
(AP, 10/7/07)
2007 Oct 7, In Paris, France, intruders, apparently drunk, broke into the Orsay Museum through a back door and punched a hole in “Le Pont d’Argenteuil,” a renowned work by Impressionist painter Claude Monet.
(AP, 10/8/07)
2007 Oct 7, Irakly Okruashvili, Georgia’s former defense minister, retracted allegations that the president of this former Soviet republic was involved in a murder plot and other corruption. Okruashvili’s lawyer, Eka Beselia, said the statements “were made under duress.”
(AP, 10/8/07)
2007 Oct 7, Thousands of people marched through Hong Kong’s streets to demand the right to pick their city’s leader and legislature and hoisted yellow umbrellas to form the year 2012, their target year for full democracy.
(AP, 10/7/07)
2007 Oct 7, In Budapest, Hungary, Yu Nakajima of Japan (16) took the top prize at the Rubik’s Cube World Championships, solving the cube 5 times in an average of 12.46 seconds.
(AP, 10/8/07)
2007 Oct 7, In Baghdad bombings killed at least nine Iraqis in three separate attacks, including one near Iran’s embassy.
(AP, 10/7/07)
2007 Oct 7, Myanmar’s military leaders stepped up pressure on monks who spearheaded pro-democracy rallies, saying that weapons had been seized from Buddhist monasteries and threatening to punish all violators of the law.
(AP, 10/7/07)
2007 Oct 7, In northwest Pakistan 2 suspected al-Qaida fighters and a dozen villagers were among about 80 people killed in fierce fighting between soldiers and militants. The early morning operation was launched in retaliation for overnight attacks by extremists on two military convoys in the region that left two soldiers dead and another 30 wounded.
(AFP, 10/7/07)(AP, 10/8/07)
2007 Oct 7, Rami Khader Ayyad (32), a prominent Palestinian Christian activist, was found dead on a Gaza City street, sending a shudder of fear through a tiny Christian community feeling increasingly insecure since the Islamic Hamas seized control last summer. He bore a visible gunshot wound to the head and was also stabbed numerous times. Ayyad had been missing since the previous afternoon.
(AP, 10/7/07)
2007 Oct 7, Qatar’s Diar real estate investment company announced it has agreed to buy phase two of the Grosvenor Waterside residential development in the upmarket London district of Chelsea.
(AP, 10/7/07)
2007 Oct 7, Serbian police detained 56 neo-Nazis who defied a ban and demonstrated to demand the contested province of Kosovo remain part of the Serbia.
(AP, 10/8/07)
2007 Oct 7, Sri Lanka’s navy sank a ship carrying arms and war equipment for separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, killing at least 12 people on board. Meanwhile, eight rebels and a government soldier were reported killed in other recent clashes.
(AP, 10/7/07)
2007 Oct 7, Kurdish rebels killed 13 Turkish soldiers in a clash in the country’s southeast, and troops responded by shelling an area near Iraq to try to stop the rebels from escaping across the border.
(AP, 10/7/07)
2008 Oct 7, The US Federal Reserve announced a radical plan to buy massive amounts of short-term debt in a dramatic effort to break through the severe credit clog. The Fed began lending unsecured to companies for the first time in its history.
(AP, 10/7/08)(Econ, 10/11/08, p.93)
2008 Oct 7, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama held their 2nd presidential debate. Tom Brokaw of NBC, the moderator, screened their questions and also chose others that had been submitted online.
(AP, 10/8/08)
2008 Oct 7, A US federal judge ordered that 17 Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay military prison be released in the US by Oct 10. The next day a federal appeals court temporarily blocked the decision.
(SFC, 10/8/08, p.A2)(SFC, 10/9/08, p.A4)
2008 Oct 7, Lee W. Dubois (32) of Lexington, SC, a former Army contractor, pleaded guilty to stealing nearly $40 million worth of jet and diesel fuel from a US Army base in Iraq and selling it on the black market. Dubois admitted he and others used false paperwork to draw more than 10 million gallons of fuel from Camp Liberty in Baghdad between October 2007 and May.
(AP, 10/8/08)
2008 Oct 7, California State Controller John Chiang warned that state revenues and cash flows were deteriorating and that the state was already short $1.1 billion after the first 3 months of its fiscal year.
(WSJ, 10/8/08, p.A9)
2008 Oct 7, Harvard Univ. said medical device billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, chairman of Swiss-based Synthes Inc., had donated $125 million, the largest one-time gift in the history of the school. In 2004 Wyss had donated $25 million to support doctoral programs at Harvard.
(WSJ, 10/5/08, p.A6)
2008 Oct 7, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Advanced Technology Investment, a recently formed investment firm owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, said they will become joint owners of a new company that will take over AMD’s factories in Germany.
(WSJ, 10/8/08, p.B3)
2008 Oct 7, Afghan refugees flowed over the border from Pakistan’s Bajur battle zone after officials accused them of links with Taliban militants and ordered them out.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, Algerian PM Ahmed Ouyahia said there had been 250 million euros worth of damage, largely to infrastructure, from the recent flooding.
(AP, 10/12/08)
2008 Oct 7, The Toronto stock exchange fell 401 points making a cumulative drop of 3942 points since Sep 1. As PM Harper spoke to reassure business people, Canadian autoworkers held a funeral march to mark the loss of some 67,000 jobs over the past year.
(Econ, 10/11/08, p.51)
2008 Oct 7, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet voted to extend Germany’s military mission in Afghanistan for 14 more months.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, Iceland nationalized its second-largest bank under day-old legislation and negotiated a euro4 billion ($5.4 billion) loan from Russia to shore up the nation’s finances amid a full-blown financial crisis.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, In India Tata Chairman Ratan Tata said the company had acquired 1,100 acres in Gujarat state and will relocate equipment from the failed Nano minicar project in West Bengal.
(WSJ, 10/8/08, p.A14)
2008 Oct 7, In northeast India 5 days of clashes between members of the Bodo tribe, Assam’s largest tribe, and local Muslims left 53 people dead with 25 of them shot by police.
(Econ, 10/11/08, p.60)
2008 Oct 7, In Iraq an American soldier was fatally shot by an al-Qaida in Iraq extremist in Mosul. An Iraqi policeman was also killed in the fighting.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, Israel’s PM Olmert said he received assurances that Russia would not allow Israel’s security to be threatened, but offered no indication he won the concrete promises he sought on Russian arms sales or sanctions on Iran.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, In Kenya Jerome Corsi, who wrote “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” was picked up by police and deported for not having a work permit.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, In Mauritania police fired tear gas and used batons to beat back union activists demanding the reinstatement of the deposed president.
(AP, 10/8/08)
2008 Oct 7, Mexico extradited former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo (2000-2004) to face corruption charges, and the ex-leader told a judge there is no evidence to support the allegations against him.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas, gunmen killed police commander Rodolfo Barragan (38) in a hail of bullets at a hotel parking lot.
(AP, 10/9/08)
2008 Oct 7, Tropical Storm Marco roared ashore on Mexico’s Gulf coast with near-hurricane force winds, prompting a shutdown of some oil platforms and forcing the evacuation of some 3,000 people.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, In Romania some 7,000 workers and trade unionists marched around the parliament in Bucharest to demand higher salaries and better working conditions.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, Former Guantanamo detainee Mustafa Ibrahim Mustafa Al Hassan arrived in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum and vowed to campaign for the release of the roughly 255 inmates remaining at the US military prison.
(AP, 10/9/08)
2008 Oct 7, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that two Japanese citizens and a Japanese-born American won the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics for discoveries in the world of subatomic physics.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, Thai riot police clashed with thousands of opposition PAD protesters who barricaded Parliament and vowed to block the government from exiting the building. 2 people were killed. Deputy PM Chavalit Yongchaiyudh resigned to take responsibility for the chaos.
(AP, 10/7/08)(SFC, 10/9/08, p.A16)(Econ, 10/11/08, p.55)
2008 Oct 7, Turkish warplanes bombed suspected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq and southeast Turkey, in new air strikes responding to an attack that killed 17 soldiers at a military outpost four days ago.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, The UN food agency (WFP) said it is resuming free breakfasts for hundreds of thousands of poor Cambodian schoolchildren after securing new funds for a program suspended due to high food prices.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, The UN refugee agency said at least 5,000 people have fled violence in northeastern Congo and sought shelter in neighboring Sudan over the last two weeks due to ferocious attacks by rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army from neighboring Uganda.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, Zambia’s ambassador said Zambia and the World Health Organization (WHO) have joined the hunt for a mystery illness that has killed four people in South Africa. A South Africa, health official said the mystery disease may be Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.
(AFP, 10/7/08)(Reuters, 10/7/08)
2009 Oct 7, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (57), Indian-born American, Yale Prof. Thomas Steitz (69) and Israeli Ada Yonath (70) won the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry for atom-by-atom mapping of the protein-making factories within cells, a feat that has spurred the development of antibiotics. Their work on ribosomes has been fundamental to the scientific understanding of life. They will split the 10 million (US$1.4 million award).
(AP, 10/7/09)
2009 Oct 7, The Oakland, Ca., City Council approved a BART plan to build a 3.2 mile extension to the Oakland airport.
(SFC, 10/8/09, p.A1)
2009 Oct 7, Irving Penn (b.1917), American fashion photographer, died in NYC. He began contributing to Vogue magazine in 1943. His younger brother Arthur Penn (b.1922) gained renown as a film director and producer.
(SFC, 10/8/09, p.A8)
2009 Oct 7, The war in Afghanistan entered its 9th year. In eastern Afghanistan an insurgent rocket ripped through a bus on a highway, killing two people aboard and wounding about 25. A Spanish soldier was killed when a patrol vehicle drove over a mine near the western town of Heart. American and Afghan forces battled militants in neighboring Wardak province, killing a number of insurgents.
(AP, 10/7/09)(AP, 10/8/09)
2009 Oct 7, Pedro Elias Zadunaisky (b.1917), Argentine astronomer and mathematician, died. His calculations helped determine the orbit of Saturn’s outermost moon, Phoebe, as well as Halley’s Comet.
(AP, 10/7/09)
2009 Oct 7, The first British-built Honda Jazz auto rolled off the assembly line after production was switched from Japan in a move the manufacturer hopes will end a troubled year for the factory.
(AFP, 10/7/09)
2009 Oct 7, In Colombia machine gun-firing rebels on motorbikes attacked a prison, springing ELN guerrilla rebel chief Gustavo Anibal Giraldo. One guard was killed and another suffered multiple gunshot wounds in the daring midday raid, which ended with Giraldo fleeing on the back of a motorcycle. Giraldo was charged with kidnapping two journalists in 2003 on assignment for the Los Angeles Times. Giraldo was also charged in a US indictment unsealed in December with the 15-month kidnapping of a US helicopter mechanic.
(AP, 10/7/09)
2009 Oct 7, Egypt’s antiquities department severed its ties with France’s Louvre museum because it has refused to return what are described as stolen artifacts,
(AP, 10/7/09)
2009 Oct 7, In Iraq a group of 36 Iranian opposition members were returned to Camp Ashraf, after nearly three months in Iraqi custody and despite an ongoing effort to expel them. A roadside bomb struck a police patrol in Jalula, Diyala province, killing three officers. PM Nouri al-Maliki told a group of business leaders gathered in Baghdad that Iraq’s budget was strained by the number of police and soldiers needed to protect the country.
(AP, 10/7/09)(AP, 10/8/09)
2009 Oct 7, A top Italian court overturned a law granting Premier Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while in office. It had been pushed through by Berlusconi’s coalition in 2008 when the premier faced separate trials in Milan for corruption and tax fraud tied to his Mediaset broadcasting empire.
(AP, 10/8/09)
2009 Oct 7, Madagascar’s opposing political factions agreed to retain the coup leader as head of the transitional government, but will not allow him to run in presidential elections.
(AP, 10/7/09)
2009 Oct 7, In Nigeria the armed Niger Delta militant group MEND dismissed a government amnesty program as a “charade” and warned it would resume attacks on oil facilities once its ceasefire expires next week.
(AFP, 10/7/09)
2009 Oct 7, Yasser Abed Rabbo, Palestinian adviser to Pres. Abbas, said the Palestinian leadership made a mistake by suspending action on a UN report on Gaza war crimes, the first such acknowledgment after days of protests in the West Bank and Gaza. In an apparent attempt at damage control, Abbas’ government is now backing a request by Libya to convene the UN Security Council for an emergency session on the report.
(AP, 10/7/09)
2009 Oct 7, A Saudi court convicted Mazen Abdul-Jawad for publicly talking about sex after he bragged on a TV talk show about his exploits, sentencing him to five years in jail and 1,000 lashes. The program, which aired July 15 on the Lebanese LBC satellite channel, was seen in Saudi Arabia and scandalized conservative viewers where such frank talk is rarely heard in public.
(AP, 10/7/09)
2009 Oct 7, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah made his first visit to Syria since becoming monarch, the strongest indication yet of thawing relations between the two rival nations following years of tension. The 2-day talks between Abdullah and Assad focused on the need for Arab solidarity in view of the numerous challenges facing the Arab world.
(AP, 10/7/09)(AP, 10/9/09)
2009 Oct 7, Somali pirates in two skiffs fired on a French navy vessel after apparently mistaking it for a commercial boat. The French ship gave chase and captured five suspected pirates.
(AP, 10/7/09)
2009 Oct 7, In Turkey protesters hurled firebombs at banks and police and smashed shop windows in a second day of protests against the International Monetary Fund.
(AP, 10/7/09)
2010 Oct 7, Afghan President Hamid Karzai hosted the inaugural session of a new peace council set up to guide efforts to reconcile with the Taliban and other insurgent groups. In the north a Taliban suicide attack killed a German soldier and wounded six others in Baghlan province. The death brought to 44 the number of German troops killed in the Afghan war. A senior Taliban leader, accused of commanding an “assassination cell” in Kandahar city, was captured. 4 militants were killed and one captured by an Afghan-NATO force in eastern Wardak province’s Chaki Wardak district. A joint force also recovered and destroyed almost 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) of narcotics during two operations in Kandahar and Nangarhar provinces.
(AP, 10/7/10)(AFP, 10/7/10)(AP, 10/8/10)
2010 Oct 7, Australian PM Julia Gillard dropped her unpopular “citizens’ assembly” to guide climate change policy after the plan drew fierce criticism during the recent election campaign.
(AFP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, Bangladesh boat operators said at least 200 fishermen were missing after 15 fishing boats capsized in the Bay of Bengal during a storm. A storm surge over the past two days has sent waves five feet high crashing into several towns and villages along the coast.
(Reuters, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, In Brazil Globo TV’s website said that a 13-year-old boy was killed in the crossfire of a gunbattle during a police operation to recover a stolen vehicle in a shantytown. A 67-year-old woman died and two people were injured in an unrelated shootout between police and gang members. Dozens of armed drug gang members have been setting up roadblocks and robbing drivers en masse in recent days in the Rio de Janeiro area, prompting the firing of 19 police battalion leaders a day earlier.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, Researchers at London’s Kew Gardens said they have discovered that the Paris japonica has a genetic code 50 times longer than that of a human being. To date this was the longest genome discovered.
(SFC, 10/8/10, p.A2)
2010 Oct 7, In Canada mercury was discharged during a reconfiguration of pipes at the Teck Resources Ltd. lead smelter waste-treatment plant in Trail, British Columbia. The work has since been completed and the leak stopped.
(Reuters, 10/8/10)
2010 Oct 7, In China a new regulation that took effect saying mine bosses who don’t go underground with their workers will be severely punished in the latest bid to improve safety in the world’s deadliest mines.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, China says at least 38 people in the southern part of the country have been infected with a mosquito-borne virus that causes an illness similar to dengue fever. This was thought to be China’s largest-ever outbreak of the chikungunya virus, which can cause fevers, joint pain, headaches and rashes.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, In eastern Congo children in Burinyi village found an unexploded grenade on their way to fetch water from a well. 5 children died when it detonated as they were playing with it.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, In Ecuador a court was issued authorizing the jailing of 12 police officers and a police colonel while prosecutors investigate the Sep 30 police uprising that resulted in 5 deaths.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, Hungary’s most prestigious organization of scientists and researchers said tests of the red sludge flowing into the Danube show no dangerous heavy metal levels. Disaster relief officials said more than 150 people, most of them suffering chemical burns, were treated in hospitals after part of the MAL Zrt company metals factory reservoir collapsed and a toxic torrent swept through three villages killing 8 people.
(AP, 10/7/10)(AP, 10/8/10)(AP, 10/11/10)
2010 Oct 7, Interpol notified its members that India has issued arrest warrants for five Pakistani citizens, including two army officers, for alleged involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, In Iran a pair of gunmen opened fire on a police patrol in its Kurdish region, killing four officers and a bystander.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, In Iraq back-to-back bombings at a vegetable market south of Baghdad killed at least five people, including a policeman who was searching for explosives.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, Israel signed a contract with the United States to buy 20 F-35 fighter jets after Washington offered “incentives” for the Jewish state to help sputtering peace talks.
(AFP, 10/8/10)
2010 Oct 7, In Italy Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao sealed Sino-Italian business deals worth €2.25 billion ($3.15 billion), after fending off European pressure to raise the value of the yuan.
(AFP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, The assembly in Indian-controlled Kashmir erupted in violence when opposition lawmakers scuffled with security guards to protest a suggestion that only a deal between India and Pakistan could bring peace to the region.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, In Kazakhstan a Russian Soyuz TMA-01M rocket blasted off for the Int’l. Space Station carrying one American and 2 Russian astronauts.
(SFC, 10/8/10, p.A2)
2010 Oct 7, In Pakistan 2 suspected suicide bombers blew themselves up inside a crowded Sufi shrine compound in the southern city of Karachi, killing 8 people with 65 injured.
(Reuters, 10/7/10)(AP, 10/8/10)
2010 Oct 7, A top Palestinian negotiator says the Palestinians have accepted a US proposal calling on Israel to extend a West Bank settlement slowdown for another two months.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, The 2010 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa (b.1936) “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.”
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, Russian Technologies chief Sergei Chemezov told reporters that Russia is reimbursing Iran for its down payments on a deal for advanced S-300 ground-to-air missiles, which Moscow halted in the face of tough new UN sanctions.
(AFP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, South Korean financial regulators said they will suspend the operations of an Iranian bank for two months, as part of international sanctions over Tehran’s suspected nuclear weapons program.
(AFP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, Sudan’s army said it attacked rebel positions in the Darfur region hours before the arrival of a delegation of UN Security Council envoys in the territory. Armed men abducted a civilian peacekeeper in the capital North Darfur state hours after the arrival of UN Security Council envoys.
(Reuters, 10/7/10)(Reuters, 10/8/10)
2010 Oct 7, In Vietnam the death toll from vicious rains nearly doubled to 48 after disaster officials were finally able to access areas that had been cut off by high waters. Another 23 people remained missing as villagers started returning to areas where the water was receding.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, Yemeni authorities announced the arrest of seven suspects in the attack on the motorcade of the British embassy’s No. 2, all from Nuqum, an area in the capital that has become synonymous with militancy.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2011 Oct 7, Federal authorities in California vowed to shut down dozens of pot growing and sales operations in a major crackdown, saying the worst offenders are using the cover of medical marijuana to act as storefront drug dealers.
(AP, 10/8/11)
2011 Oct 7, Rene Gonzalez (55), a dual US-Cuban citizen, left a federal lockup in the Florida Panhandle. He was the first member of a Cuban spy ring to walk free from prison in the US after spending 13 years behind bars.
(AP, 10/15/11)
2011 Oct 7, New York City authorities said bank tellers, restaurant workers and other service employees in NYC lifted credit card data from residents and foreign tourists as part of an identity theft ring that stretched to China, Europe and the Middle East and victimized thousands.
(AP, 10/7/11)
2011 Oct 7, A federal jury in Las Vegas convicted Navy SEAL Nicholas Bickle on charges that he led a scheme to sell machine guns and explosives from Iraq and Afghanistan in the US. On July 17, 2012, Bickle was sentenced to 17½ years in prison.
(SFC, 10/8/11, p.A5)(SFC, 7/18/12, p.A8)
2011 Oct 7, Wired magazine reported that a computer virus has infected networks used by pilots who control US Air Force drones in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. The spyware resisted efforts to remove it from computers at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.
(SSFC, 10/9/11, p.A12)
2011 Oct 7, The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Tawakkul Karman (32) of Yemen. She shared the prize with Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson and Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, as the Nobel committee gave a nod to the Arab Spring.
(AP, 10/7/11)
2011 Oct 7, Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai admitted his government and NATO had failed to provide security to Afghans, as Afghanistan marked the 10th anniversary of a war that has cost thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Karzai claimed the Taliban are being propped up by Pakistan, saying the militants can’t lift a finger without the Pakistanis.
(AFP, 10/7/11)(AP, 10/7/11)
2011 Oct 7, In southwest China 2 teenagers set themselves on fire near a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Aba town amid rumors that dozens of monks were ready to sacrifice their lives. Choepel and Khayang were former monks from Sichuan province’s Kirti monastery.
(AFP, 10/7/11)
2011 Oct 7, In China 3 major road accidents killed 56 people on the last day of a weeklong holiday, including 35 people who died when a bus collided with a car on a northern expressway.
(AP, 10/8/11)
2011 Oct 7, Dubai’s flagship Emirates airline said it will sponsor Britain’s first urban cable car spanning London’s river Thames, saying it hoped the new addition to the city’s skyline would be ready for next year’s Olympics. The 10-year-deal was valued at 36 million pounds.
(Reuters, 10/7/11)
2011 Oct 7, India’s largest car maker Maruti Suzuki said a fresh strike by workers halted production at a north India plant, just days after the end of a bitter month-long dispute.
(AFP, 10/7/11)
2011 Oct 7, Libyan revolutionary fighters assaulted a convention center in the center of Sirte that forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi turned into their main base. At least 17 fighters were killed and 180 wounded.
(AP, 10/7/11)(AP, 10/8/11)(AFP, 10/8/11)
2011 Oct 7, Mexican officials found 10 more bodies in Veracruz, in what appears to be more bloodshed in the battle between rival cartels for control of drug trafficking in the port city. The relatively new Jalisco New Generation gang claims to be attacking members of the Zetas cartel with 75 deaths since Sep 20.
(AP, 10/8/11)
2011 Oct 7, Nepalese campaigners said desperate AIDS charity workers are turning to prostitution to pay bills and buy food because government bureaucracy has denied them their wages.
(AFP, 10/7/11)
2011 Oct 7, The Dutch government said it would move to reclassify high-potency marijuana alongside hard drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy.
(SFC, 10/8/11, p.A2)
2011 Oct 7, In South Africa 4 men were convicted of murdering a lesbian in Cape Town, in a case that dragged on for five years and heightened concerns about “corrective rape” targeting gay women. In 2006 The men stoned, kicked and stabbed to death Zoliswa Nkonyana (19) just meters (yards) from her home.
(AFP, 10/7/11)
2011 Oct 7, Spain’s Queen Sophia started a rare royal visit to Haiti to see some of the aid projects that her country has helped finance in the earthquake-stricken country.
(AP, 10/7/11)
2011 Oct 7, Spanish bullfighter Juan Jose Padilla (39) was pinned to the ground and gored by a bull in Zaragoza. He is likely to suffer facial paralysis and lose the sight in one eye after a terrifying goring.
(AP, 10/8/11)
2011 Oct 7, Syrian security forces opened fire at protesters in several parts of the country, killing at least eight people and wounding scores. Leading opposition figure Riad Seif was beaten up by pro-government gunmen and rushed to a hospital in Damascus. Russia’s Pres. Dmitry Medvedev told Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to either reform or resign. In Qamishli Mashaal Tammo (53), a prominent and charismatic Kurdish opposition figure, was gunned down by masked gunmen.
(AP, 10/7/11)(AP, 10/8/11)
2011 Oct 7, Mining multinational RioTinto’s Zimbabwean subsidiary Murowa Diamonds said it has ceded 51% of its equity to comply with a new law giving local blacks majority shares in foreign companies.
(AFP, 10/7/11)
2012 Oct 7, US health officials reported an additional 27 cases in a fungal meningitis outbreak linked to steroid injections that has killed seven people and now infected 91 in nine states.
(Reuters, 10/7/12)
2012 Oct 7, In Cape Canaveral, Florida, the SpaceX company launched a Falcon rocket carrying a Dragon capsule with some 1,000 pounds of gear and supplies for the Int’l. Space Station. An engine problem left a small communications satellite unable to reach its proper orbit. The Dragon capsule successfully returned in a splashdown off the Baja California coast on Oct 28.
(SFC, 10/8/12, p.A4)(Economist, 10/13/12, p.96)(SFC, 10/29/12, p.A6)
2012 Oct 7, In San Francisco the 12th annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival ended a 3-day run in Golden Gate Park. Fleet Week closed out with performances by the Blue Angels jet team. The America’s Cup World Series took place on the Bay. The Castro Street Fair took place along with the Italian Heritage Parade on Market St.
(SFC, 10/8/12, p.A7)
2012 Oct 7, Israel targeted two men in an airstrike into southern Gaza, killing one and wounding the other.
(AP, 10/8/12)
2012 Oct 7, A boat left Naples and aiming to reach Gaza in mid-October in the latest attempt to break Israel’s naval blockade. It carried items such as cement, basketballs, musical instruments and theater lighting equipment.
(AP, 10/9/12)
2012 Oct 7, Libya’s parliament ousted Mustafa Abushagur, the country’s new prime minister, in a no-confidence vote. He had 25 days from his Sep. 12 appointment by parliament to form a Cabinet and win the legislature’s approval, but that deadline expired today.
(AP, 10/7/12)
2012 Oct 7, In Mexico Zetas drug cartel leader Heriberto Lazcano was apparently one of two men killed in a firefight with marines in the northern border state of Coahuila. Lazcano, also known as “El Verdugo” (the Executioner) for his brutality, was suspected in hundreds of killings, including the June 2004 slaying of Francisco Ortiz Franco, a top editor of a crusading weekly newspaper in Tijuana that often reported on drug trafficking. The next day a group of armed men raided the funeral home where the bodies were kept, and stole both corpses. Trevino Morales, also known as El 40 or the Monkey, became the uncontested head of the Zetas after Lazcano was killed.
(AP, 10/9/12)(ABC News, 10/12/12)
2012 Oct 7, The Pakistani military blocked a convoy carrying thousands of Pakistanis and a small contingent of US anti-war activists from entering a lawless tribal region along the border with Afghanistan to protest American drone strikes.
(AP, 10/7/12)
2012 Oct 7, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III announced that his government has reached a preliminary peace deal with the nation’s largest Muslim rebel group in a major breakthrough toward ending a decades-long insurgency. Aquino said the “framework agreement,” to be signed on Oct 15, was an assurance the Moro Islamic Liberation Front insurgents will no longer aim to secede from the country in return for autonomy in a new area, Bangsamoro.
(AP, 10/7/12)(Economist, 10/13/12, p.17)
2012 Oct 7, South Korea announced that a US accord has been altered to allow the South to have ballistic missiles with a range of up to 800 km (500 miles) to better cope with North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats.
(AP, 10/7/12)
2012 Oct 7, In Spain thousands of people marched in 56 cities to protest punishing austerity cuts they say will only increase unemployment and job insecurity in a country suffering from its second recession in three years and record high unemployment.
(AP, 10/7/12)
2012 Oct 7, In Sri Lanka 4 unidentified men assaulted Manjula Tillekeratne, the secretary of the Judicial Service Commission. In September she had alleged the efforts were being made to destroy the independence of the judiciary.
(Economist, 10/13/12, p.50)
2012 Oct 7, Syrian troops pressed their offensive to retake rebel-held areas in the northern city of Aleppo, Homs, towns around the Syrian capital of Damascus and southern villages on the border with Jordan. A car bomb exploded near the police headquarters in central Damascus, killing at least one person and damaging nearby buildings.
(AP, 10/7/12)
2012 Oct 7, Turkish jets struck suspected Kurdish rebel targets in two separate cross-border raids in northern Iraq.
(AP, 10/8/12)
2012 Oct 7, Turkish artillery fired toward Syria for a fifth day in a row, minutes after a Syrian shell landed on Turkish territory.
(AP, 10/7/12)
2012 Oct 7, Pope Benedict XVI name St. John of Avila, Spain, and St. Hildegard of Bingen, Germany, as “doctors” of the church. Only 33 other church doctors have been singled out over the course of Christianity for their contributions to and influence on Catholic doctrine.
(AP, 10/7/12)
2012 Oct 7, Venezuela held presidential elections. With 90 percent of votes counted, Chavez had more than 54 percent of the vote to 45 percent for challenger Henrique Capriles. The opposition accused Chavez of unfairly using Venezuela’s oil wealth and his near total control of state institutions to his advantage.
(AP, 10/7/12)
2013 Oct 7, Two Americans and a German-American won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering how key substances are transported within cells, a process involved in such important activities as brain cell communication and the release of insulin. James Rothman (62) of Yale University, Randy Schekman (64) of the University of California, Berkeley, and Dr. Thomas Sudhof (57) of Stanford University shared the $1.2 million prize for their research on how tiny bubbles called vesicles act as cargo carriers inside cells.
(AP, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 7, SF announced that Marc Benioff, head of Salesforce.com, will donate $2.7 million to the city’s 12 middle schools.
(SFC, 10/7/13, p.A1)
2013 Oct 7, A record-breaking storm dropped 4 feet of snow in parts of South Dakota and left over 22,000 homes and businesses without electricity. Tens of thousands of cattle died in South Dakota. The storm also buried parts of Wyoming and Colorado and spawned tornadoes in Nebraska and Iowa. At least 4 people died due to the storm.
(SFC, 10/8/13, p.A5)(SFC, 10/14/13, p.A4)
2013 Oct 7, Bahrain sentenced nine people to life in prison after trial on charges of bomb-making in the restive Gulf nation.
(AP, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 7, In Brazil thousands marched in Rio de Janeiro to support teachers seeking pay hikes before masked anarchists turned to violence, setting fires, breaking into buildings and smashing a City Hall gate.
(AFP, 10/8/13)
2013 Oct 7, Britain launched its new National Crime Agency (NCA) and unveiled a revamped strategy to combat serious organized crime, which it says costs the country 24 billion pounds ($38.6 billion) and represents a threat to national security.
(Reuters, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 7, In the Central Africa Republic self-defence groups began attacking the village of Garga, leaving 3 dead and a dozen injured.
(AFP, 10/8/13)
2013 Oct 7, Typhoon Fitow barrelled into China’s east coast, packing winds of more than 200 kilometres (125 miles) an hour, after hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated and bullet train services were suspended.
(AFP, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 7, Colombia imposed temporary tariffs and quotas on imports of potatoes, onions, beans, tomatoes, powdered milk, fresh cheese, milk and whey to help alleviate protests by farmers over expensive fertilizers and free trade deals.
(Econ, 10/26/13, p.44)
2013 Oct 7, Colombia’s state oil company Ecopetrol said its second most important oil pipeline, the Cano Limon-Covenas, has been temporarily shut down after three bomb attacks. Security forces attributed the attacks to leftist guerrillas.
(Reuters, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 7, In Cyprus an independent judicial inquiry said former communist president, Demetris Christofias, and his government bear chief blame for the island’s financial meltdown in March after they failed to control spending and behaved in an imperious manner.
(AP, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 7, In Egypt suspected militants killed 6 soldiers near the Suez Canal and fired rocket-propelled grenades at a state satellite station in Cairo. A car bombing hit the security headquarters in el-Tor near the tourist resorts of southern Sinai, killing 3 policemen and wounding dozens.
(Reuters, 10/7/13)(AP, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 7, A French oceanographic vessel rescued 29 Syrian refugees, part of a group of 363 asylum-seekers that have landed in Italy in the past 24 hours.
(AFP, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 7, In France Patrice Chereau (68), a celebrated actor and director in film, theater and opera, died. He was renowned for cutting-edge productions.
(AP, 10/8/13)
2013 Oct 7, In Greece Akis Tsochadzopoulos (73), former Greek defense minister, was jailed for 20 years after being found guilty o money laundering. 16 of 18 co-defendants were also found guilty.
(SFC, 10/8/13, p.A2)
2013 Oct 7, In Hong Kong a 118-carat white diamond, discovered in the rough in 2011 in southern Africa, sold at auction for $30.6 million.
(SFC, 10/8/13, p.A4)
2013 Oct 7, The 2-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit opened in Bali, Indonesia. At its end leaders agreed that that the Doha round of global trade talks were at an impasse and urged trade ministers to reconvene in December to get negotiations back on track.
(SFC, 10/8/13, p.A4)(SFC, 10/9/13, p.A5)
2013 Oct 7, In Libya dozens of unarmed soldiers occupied the prime minister’s office in Tripoli to demand unpaid wages.
(AFP, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 7, The Maldives Supreme Court annulled the results of the September 7 presidential election and scheduled a fresh vote for October 20 after a candidate challenged the outcome, citing irregularities. Earlier in the day masked men burst into the Raajje TV studio in Male, stabbed a security guard and set the place ablaze. Raajje was alligned with the oppposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP).
(Reuters, 10/7/13)(Econ, 10/12/13, p.52)
2013 Oct 7, In northern Mali suspected radical Islamic militants fired a series of mortar shells on Gao, marking the first such attack in months after the French-led military operation drove the jihadists from power. Suspected Islamic militants set off explosions at two bridges near Ansongo.
(AP, 10/7/13)(AP, 10/8/13)
2013 Oct 7, Dutch coastguards scrambled helicopters and divers to search for three sailors missing in the North Sea after their ship sank following a collision with a fishing trawler.
(AFP, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 7, In Pakistan a bomb exploded next to a van carrying security guards tasked with protecting workers involved in an anti-polio drive in the village of Malikhel, about 20 km outside Peshawar, killing 2 people.
(AP, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 7, Russia suspended imports of dairy products from neighboring Lithuania, turning up trade pressure on the European Union member weeks before it hosts a summit that could pull former Soviet republics further from Moscow’s orbit.
(Reuters, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 7, UN leader Ban Ki-moon said about 100 international experts will have to spend up to a year in Syria destroying its chemical weapons in a mission of unprecedented danger.
(AFP, 10/8/13)
2014 Oct 7, A US federal appeals court in San Francisco struck down Nevada and Idaho’s bans on same-sex marriage. The ruling also applies to all nine states in the court’s territory and will overturn marriage bans in Montana, Alaska and Arizona.
(SFC, 10/8/14, p.A6)
2014 Oct 7, Susan Koret, the widow of Joe Koret, filed suit against real estate magnate Tad Taube, board president of the Koret Foundation, accusing him of using the $500 million charity as a personal piggybank. The foundation immediately countersued to remove Susan Koret, the founder’s 2nd wife, from the board for incompetence and breach of duty.
(SFC, 10/8/14, p.E1)
2014 Oct 7, An Alabama jury convicted Desmonte Leonard of murder in the June 9, 2012, shooting deaths of two former Auburn Univ. football players and a third man.
(SFC, 10/8/14, p.A6)
2014 Oct 7, The SF Board of Supervisors voted to legalize the growing trend of turning homes into ad-hoc hotels by passing the “Airbnb law,” which places some restrictions on the practice.
(SFC, 10/8/14, p.A1)
2014 Oct 7, California officials detected the Aedes aegypti mosquito in the Los Angeles area. The day-time biting mosquito was capable of transmitting dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever viruses.
(SFC, 10/16/14, p.A10)
2014 Oct 7, In northern California a fire fighting air tanker crashed killing pilot Geoffrey Hunt (62) near Arch Rock on the west side of Yosemite National Park.
(SFC, 10/8/14, p.A1)(SFC, 10/9/14, p.D1)
2014 Oct 7, A cell-phone video was released showing Indiana police breaking a car window and then using a stun gun on a man in a car after police stopped the driver for not wearing a seat belt.
(SFC, 10/8/14, p.A6)
2014 Oct 7, Canada’s Parliament voted to authorize airstrikes against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq following a US request.
(AP, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, Chinese officials said the dengue virus has killed six people and infected more than 23,000 in southern China’s worst outbreak of the mosquito-transmitted disease in about two decades.
(AP, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, In southwestern China a strong, shallow 6.0 earthquake shook Yunnan province. At least one person was killed as aftershocks continued to strike the area.
(AP, 10/8/14)
2014 Oct 7, Cyprus’ president suspended talks on reunifying the ethnically divided island in response to Turkey’s plans to search for oil and gas in waters where the Cypriot government has already licensed Italy’s Eni and South Korea’s Kogas to drill.
(AP, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, Egyptian military officials said troops have killed 16 members of an al-Qaida-inspired militant group in the restive Sinai Peninsula. Four leading members of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis were arrested during the operations.
(AP, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, The German government said a convoy of 112 trucks carrying aid from Germany has crossed into Ukraine and the goods will be distributed in the country’s east by local officials.
(AP, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, In Germany train drivers’ union GDL called for a nine-hour nationwide strike starting this evening. Pilots’ union Vereinigung Cockpit announced a two-day strike at Lufthansa’s freight arm starting at 2100 ET on Oct 8.
(Reuters, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, In Hong Kong crowds of protesters who filled the streets with demands for more democracy thinned dramatically after student leaders and the government agreed to hold talks in the increasingly frustrated city.
(AP, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, Indian and Pakistani troops fired bullets and mortar shells across the border between Kashmir and Pakistan for a second day, with both accusing the other of provoking the violence. Police in both countries said troops exchanged fire for hours overnight, killing a Pakistani man and injuring at least 22 others.
(AP, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, Iran said it had seized explosives destined for an attack on one of its holy cities and that more than 130 members of militant extremist groups had been arrested.
(AFP, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, International prosecutors accused the Kenyan government of failing to hand over phone and bank records they said would help them show President Uhuru Kenyatta paid collaborators to take part in post-election violence in 2007.
(Reuters, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, Two Japanese scientists and a Japanese-born American won the Nobel Prize in physics for inventing blue light-emitting diodes. Isamu Akasaki (85), Hiroshi Amano (54) and naturalized US citizen Shuji Nakamura (54) revolutionized lighting technology two decades ago when they came up with a long-elusive component of the white LED lights.
(AP, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, In Kenya transgender activist Audrey Mbugua won a landmark case when the High Court ordered the Kenya National Examinations Council to change her name on her academic certificates.
(Reuters, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, In Turkey Kurdish protesters clashed with police. 20 protesters were killed in the clashes, mostly between sympathizers of rival Kurdish groups. Kurdish protesters also forced their way into the European Parliament in Brussels, part of Europe-wide demonstrations against the Islamic State group’s advance on a town on the Syrian-Turkish border.
(AP, 10/7/14)(Econ, 10/11/14, p.59)
2014 Oct 7, The Myanmar government pardoned 3,073 prisoners, but advocacy groups said no political prisoners were included despite a pledge by the president to free all such detainees by the end of this year.
(AP, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, In Pakistan a suspected US drone strike on a Taliban compound in North Waziristan killed at least six militants.
(AP, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, In Romania thousands of workers and health workers protested against low salaries and endemic underfunding of the health system which have led to thousands of doctors and nurses seeking work abroad.
(AP, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, Turkey’s president said Kobani was “about to fall” after Islamic State fighters advanced into the south west of the Syrian Kurdish town, pressing home a three-week assault has cost a reported 412 lives. More than 2,000 Syrian Kurds including women and children were evacuated from the town after the latest fighting.
(Reuters, 10/7/14)
2014 Oct 7, Venezuelan police moved in before dawn to arrest what authorities said is a gang behind multiple homicides. That led to an eight-hour standoff that created panic and blocked traffic across several downtown blocks. 5 people were killed including Jose Odreman, a former policeman and well-connected leader of a militia group aligned with the socialist government.
(AP, 10/8/14)(Econ, 11/29/14, p.31)
2014 Oct 7, Yemeni parties agreed to appoint Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak bin Mubarak, an associate of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, as prime minister, a move some Yemenis expect may lead to the withdrawal of Shi’ite Muslim fighters from the capital Sanaa.
(Reuters, 10/7/14)
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