Timeline 2004 January - March
Return to home
2004 Jan 1, The
University of Southern California defeated the University of Michigan,
28-14, in the Rose Bowl.
(AP, 1/1/05)
2004 Jan 1, The 1st US anti-spam
law, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, went into effect. It made it illegal for
advertisers to falsify their identity and required an effective way for
recipients to get themselves removed from advertiser lists.
(SFC, 1/2/04, p.B1)
2004 Jan 1, A California ban on
the gasoline additive MTBE went into effect. Ethanol became the new
additive of choice, even though it could increase air pollution.
(AP, 12/31/04)
2004 Jan 1, Houston's $324
million, 7.5 mile, light rail system made its inaugural trips.
(AP, 1/2/04)(WSJ, 1/22/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 1, The US Navy seized a
4th drug-smuggling vessel in the Persian Gulf with about 2,800 pounds
of hashish. Street value was estimated at $11 million.
(AP, 1/2/04)
2004 Jan 1, Afghanistan's
constitutional convention came off the rails, as panicked officials
adjourned the gathering in the face of a boycott by opponents of
President Hamid Karzai. Tajik and Uzbek delegates mounted a boycott
demanding that minority rights be guarded.
(AP, 1/1/04)(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 1, Brazil began
fingerprinting and photographing American visitors in retaliation to
similar new US procedures.
(WSJ, 12/31/03, p.A1)
2004 Jan 1, China began running
the world's 1st commercially operated maglev train in Shanghai. The
German-built system spanned 18 miles.
(SFC, 1/10/04, p.E4)
2004 Jan 1, In Colombia Luis
Eduardo Garzon took the helm as the first leftist mayor of Bogota.
(AP, 1/2/04)
2004 Jan 1, Jiri Loewy (73), a
Czech journalist who campaigned against communism from exile, died in
Germany.
(AP, 1/3/04)
2004 Jan 1, President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide pledged to improve life for his impoverished
nation as police blocked thousands of anti-government demonstrators
during celebrations marking Haiti's 200th anniversary of independence
from France. More than 15,000 Aristide supporters rallied outside the
National Palace as more than 5,000 government opponents massed in the
capital's streets and faced off with police and government partisans.
(AP, 1/1/04)(AP, 1/2/04)
2004 Jan 1, Pres. Thabo Mbeki of
South Africa joined Pres. Aristide for Haiti’s independence
celebrations.
(WPR, 3/04, p.29)
2004 Jan 1, Hong Kong began a de
facto free-trade agreement with mainland China.
(SFC, 10/15/05, p.C1)
2004 Jan 1, Iranian officials
welcomed America's temporary lifting of sanctions against the Persian
state following the country's earthquake, and the foreign minister said
the embargo should end permanently.
(AP, 1/1/04)
2004 Jan 1, Pakistan's Pervez
Musharraf won a vote of confidence that supporters hailed as the final
step on the general's journey from dictator to democrat. Opponents
derided the proceedings, which will keep the Pakistani leader in power
as president until 2007.
(AP, 1/1/04)
2004 Jan 1, A Pakistani airline
flew from Lahore to New Delhi and back, re-establishing a commercial
link that was cut by a war scare in 2002.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 1, North Korea confirmed
that it would allow a U.S. delegation to visit its main nuclear complex
next week, the first such inspection since the isolated communist
country expelled UN monitors more than a year ago.
(AP, 1/2/04)
2004 Jan 1, In South Africa a
minibus full of British and Canadian tourists headed to a scenic
mountain area crashed, killing eight Britons and the pedestrian.
(AP, 1/1/04)
2004 Jan 1, In Taiwan tens of
thousands of protesters marched peacefully to push for full democracy
in this former British colony.
(AP, 1/1/04)
2004 Jan 2, The NASA Stardust
spacecraft took pictures of the Wild-2 comet tail and collected
particles on "aerogel," a silica foam 99.8% air, the lightest material
ever made.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A8)(SSFC, 1/4/04, p.A8)
2004 Jan 2, The Fort Pierre
Livestock Auction in South Dakota managed to auction beef calves at
around 92.5 cents a pound. This was 15-20% below mid-December prices
due to the recent mad cow scare.
(WSJ, 1/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 2, In Argentina near
Buenos Aires an explosion at a supermarket that sold illegal fireworks
left five people dead and injured more than a dozen others. A gas leak
was blamed.
(AP, 1/4/04)
2004 Jan 2, British flights to
Washington and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, were canceled as a security
precaution.
(AP, 1/2/05)
2004 Jan 2, Bulgaria reported that
more than two dozen Bulgarian soldiers are refusing deployment in Iraq,
following the deaths of five countrymen.
(AP, 1/2/04)
2004 Jan 2, Ecuadorian authorities
captured Ricardo Ovidio Palmera Pineda, aka Simon Trinidad, one of the
7 members who make up the ruling secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC. He was arrested at dawn in a medical
clinic in Ecuador.
(AP, 1/3/04)(Econ, 1/10/04, p.30)
2004 Jan 2, Kemal el-Sheik (85),
Egyptian film director celebrated for a career that spanned nearly five
decades, died.
(AP, 1/2/04)
2004 Jan 2, A U.S. military
helicopter crashed west of Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding
another.
(AP, 1/2/04)
2004 Jan 2, In central Iraq
insurgents hit a U.S. base with mortar shells, killing one American
soldier and wounding two others. A US helicopter was shot down near
Fallujah killing one American soldier.
(AP, 1/3/04)(SFC, 1/2/04, p.A5)
2004 Jan 2, Norwegian police
arrested Mullah Krekar, Muslim Kurd leader of Ansar al-Islam, on
charges connected to 2 suicide bombings in Iraq 2 years ago.
(SFC, 1/2/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 2, Philippine movie star
Fernando Po Jr. filed his candidacy for the presidency.
(SFC, 1/2/04, p.A2)
2004 Jan 3, The NASA spacecraft
Spirit landed on Mars at the Gusev Crater. It was the 4th successful US
landing on Mars.
(SSFC, 1/4/04, p.A1)(USAT, 1/16/04, p.2A)
2004 Jan 3, In San Jose., Ca, a
gang brawl at a Jack in the Box restaurant left 2 teenagers (17) dead.
James Ortega (14) was charged as an adult on 2 counts of gang motivated
murder. In 2007 a San Jose court sentenced Ortega to 36 years to life
in prison for the shooting.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.A17)(SFC, 2/23/07, p.B1)
2004 Jan 3, In China a fire broke
out on an overcrowded bus along an expressway that connects Shanghai
with the eastern city of Nanjing, killing at least 12 people and
injuring 14.
(AP, 1/3/04)
2004 Jan 3, In China a landslide
crushed five houses, killing at least 14 people in northern Shanxi
province.
(AP, 1/4/04)
2004 Jan 3, An Egyptian Air Flash,
Boeing 737, carrying 148 people, most of them French tourists on New
Year family holidays, crashed into the Red Sea off the resort of Sharm
el-Sheikh, killing all on board.
(AP, 1/3/04)(SFC, 1/3/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 3, India's PM Atal Bihari
Vajpayee made a historic visit to Pakistan ahead of a key South Asian
summit, greeted with a warm handshake by PM Zafarullah Khan Jamali. The
airport ceremony would have been unimaginable just one year ago.
(AP, 1/3/04)
2004 Jan 3, In eastern India
unidentified gunmen stormed a village and shot to death five so-called
"untouchables."
(AP, 1/3/04)
2004 Jan 3, In Iran rescuers
pulled Sharbanou Mazandarani (97) from the rubble at Ban, 9 days
following the earthquake, as the death toll rose to about 35,000.
(SSFC, 1/4/04, p.A2)
2004 Jan 3, In Tikrit, Iraq,
American soldiers opened fire with a machine gun on a taxi, killing
four Iraqi civilians, including a 7-year-old boy.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2004 Jan 3, Israeli soldiers shot
and killed 3 Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus.
(AP, 1/3/04)
2004 Jan 3, Isidro Galeana (65), a
former state police commander and the first former government official
to face arrest for his role in Mexico's "dirty war" of the 1960s and
1970s, died of a heart attack.
(AP, 1/4/04)
2004 Jan 3, Nigeria said it had
routed a newly emerged Muslim militant movement fighting to create an
Islamic state in Africa's most populous nation. 2 weeks of running
gunbattles had killed at least eight people.
(AP, 1/3/04)
2004 Jan 4, Louisiana State
University won college football's Sugar Bowl, defeating Oklahoma 21-14.
(AP, 1/4/05)
2004 Jan 4, In Iowa, seven of the
nine Democratic presidential hopefuls participated in a feisty, first
debate of the election year.
(AP, 1/4/05)
2004 Jan 4, Michael Straight (87),
former US State Dept employee (1938) and later editor of the New
Republic, died. In 1983 he authored "After Long Silence." He had passed
reports to the Russians in 1938.
(Econ, 1/17/04, p.76)
2004 Jan 4, John Toland (91),
historian, died in Danbury, Conn. His books included "The Rising Sun"
(1971), an account of Japan from 1936-1945, and "Adolph Hitler: The
Definitive Biography" (1976).
(SFC, 1/6/04, p.A19)y
2004 Jan 4, Rival Afghan
factions agreed to a new national constitution. 502 delegates accepted
a system with a strong president and a weaker parliament.
(AP, 1/4/04)(SFC, 1/5/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 4, In Denmark residents
who openly bought and sold hashish at a famous hippie enclave in
Copenhagen abruptly demolished their booths, trying to head off a
Danish government crackdown on illegal drug sales.
(AP, 1/4/04)
2004 Jan 4, The former Soviet
republic of Georgia voted for a successor to President Eduard
Shevardnadze. Mikhail Saakashvili, Georgia's young firebrand opposition
leader, declared himself the victor in presidential elections with some
85% of the vote.
(AP, 1/5/04)(SFC, 1/5/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 4, Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon issued an order to dismantle two West Bank settlement
outposts.
(AP, 1/4/04)
2004 Jan 4, In the southern
Philippines a bomb exploded at a packed basketball game, killing 11
people and wounding at least 68 including Parang Mayor Vivencio Bataga,
who was the likely target of the attack.
(AP, 1/4/04)(SFC, 1/5/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 4, South Korean
prosecutors, investigating corruption in the bidding on government
contracts by an affiliate of IBM Corp., indicted 48 government and
company officials.
(AP, 1/4/04)
2004 Jan 4, In southern Thailand
assailants set fire to 18 schools and stormed a military armory,
killing four soldiers in nearly simultaneous raids.
(AP, 1/4/04)
2004 Jan 5, After 14 years of
denials, Pete Rose publicly admitted that he'd bet on baseball while
manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
(AP, 1/5/05)
2004 Jan 5, Pres. Bush extended a
1986 order of sanctions against Libya.
(WSJ, 1/6/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 5, The US began
fingerprinting and photographing int'l. passengers at 115 airports and
14 cruise-ship ports.
(SFC, 1/6/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 5, NASA released a 3-D,
black-and-white panoramic picture of the bleak surface of Mars snapped
by the newly landed rover, Spirit.
(AP, 1/5/05)
2004 Jan 5, Norman Heatley (92), a
scientist whose pioneering work on penicillin production helped save
countless lives, died in Oxford, England. It was Heatley and his Oxford
University colleagues who produced enough for the first clinical tests
on humans.
(AP, 1/17/04)(SFC, 1/19/04, p.B4)
2004 Jan 5, Kiharu Nakamura (90),
Japanese geisha, died in the US. Her 10 books included "The Memoir of a
Tokyo-born Geisha."
(Econ, 1/24/04, p.78)
2004 Jan 5, Tug McGraw (59),
baseball pitcher, died near Nashville, Tenn.
(AP, 1/5/05)
2004 Jan 5, China confirmed its
first SARS case since an outbreak of the disease was contained in July
and authorities ordered the emergency slaughter of some 10,000 civet
cats and related species after tests linked a virus found in the
animals to the patient.
(AP, 1/5/04)
2004 Jan 5, Dutchman Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer took over as NATO's top official.
(AP, 1/5/04)
2004 Jan 5, A letter bomb
addressed to a senior member of the European Parliament burst into
flames. Italian anarchists were suspected in the 7 mail attacks since
Dec 27.
(AP, 1/5/04)(SFC, 1/6/04, p.A10)
2004 Jan 5, In Mexico heavily
armed men in military and police-style uniforms raided the western
prison at Apatzingan in Michoacan state and freed 25 inmates.
(AP, 1/6/04)
2004 Jan 5, Pakistan's President
Pervez Musharraf held much-anticipated, face-to-face talks with Indian
leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the sidelines of a South Asian summit.
(AP, 1/5/04)
2004 Jan 5, In Thailand 2 bombs
exploded in the southern town of Pattani, killing 2 policemen and
injuring several people, police said. Two other bombs were found before
they could go off.
(AP, 1/5/04)(WPR, 3/04, p.32)
2004 Jan 6, A design consisting of
two reflecting pools and a paved stone field was chosen for the World
Trade Center memorial in New York.
(AP, 1/6/05)
2004 Jan 6, The Ohio Lottery
awarded $162 million to Rebecca Jemison (34). Elicia Battle (40), who
initially claimed to have lost the Dec 30 winning ticket, recanted on
Jan 8.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.A2)
2004 Jan 6, In Afghanistan a time
bomb in an apple cart blast killed at least 17 people, including 8
children, in the southern city of Kandahar. 12 civilians were executed
in Helmand Province.
(SFC, 1/7/04, p.A10)(SFC, 1/9/04, p.A12)(AP, 1/6/05)
2004 Jan 6, China began a mass
eradication of some 10,000 civet cats to stem a suspected link to SARS.
(SFC, 1/7/04, p.A14)
2004 Jan 6, PM Pierre Charles (49)
of Dominica, who slashed public spending in a bid to help his island's
economy and was a critic of U.S. policy in the Caribbean, died of an
apparent heart attack.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 6, India and Pakistan
agreed on talks to formally tackle all issues including Kashmir.
(WSJ, 1/7/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 6, Egypt and Iran agreed
to restore diplomatic ties sundered in 1979.
(WSJ, 1/7/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 6, Iraqi police opened
fire on hundreds of stone-throwing former Iraqi soldiers demanding
monthly stipends promised by the U.S.-led coalition, and reporters saw
at least four protesters shot in the southern town of Basra.
(AP, 1/6/04)
2004 Jan 6, In Liberia the LURD
and MODEL rebel groups demanded the resignation of Gyude Bryant,
interim government head.
(Econ, 1/31/04, p.48)
2004 Jan 6, North Korea offered to
refrain from producing nuclear weapons in order to rekindle talks over
its arms programs.
(SFC, 1/6/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 6, President Bashar Assad
began the first-ever visit to Turkey by a Syrian head of state, hoping
to further improve ties forge a joint position on growing Kurdish
autonomy.
(AP, 1/6/04)(WSJ, 1/7/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 6, The Sudanese
government and southern rebels agreed on how to share the country's
wealth, including oil revenues, solving a key issue and taking a major
step toward ending their 20-year conflict.
(AP, 1/6/04)
2004 Jan 6, Mijailo Mijailovic
confessed to the fatal stabbing of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh
in September 2003.
(AP, 1/6/05)
2004 Jan 7, Pres. Bush presented a
plan to grant legal status to foreigners working in the United States.
(AP, 1/8/04)(WSJ, 1/8/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 7, Digital radios went on
sale in the US.
(SFC, 1/7/04, p.B8)
2004 Jan 7, In Georgia Jerry
William Jones (31) killed 3 former in-laws and his infant daughter and
fled with 3 girl hostages. The girls were found safe and Jones shot
himself following a police chase.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 7, Canadian police in
Barrie, Ontario, raided a former Molson plant that was producing 4
crops of hydroponically grown marijuana valued at $102 million.
(Econ, 11/24/07, p.40)
2004 Jan 7, In Colombia FARC
rebels killed 8 peasant farmers because they refused to sell them their
coca crops.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 7, Dominica's main
political party chose Roosevelt Skerrit (31), the education minister,
as the next leader of this Caribbean country.
(AP, 1/8/04)
2004 Jan 7, Guatemala signed an
accord to let UN prosecutors handle organized crime and human-rights
cases.
(AP, 1/8/04)(WSJ, 1/8/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 7, In southwestern
Guatemala men with automatic weapons hijacked a minibus carrying 13
American tourists, killing one passenger. In 2005 Henry Giovanny
Vicente (27), and Marvin Sebastian Berganza (29) were convicted by a
3-judge panel of being accomplices in the killing of Brett Richards, a
52-year-old architect from Ogden, Utah, who died during a confrontation
with bandits who hijacked a bus of Mormon tourists visiting Mayan ruins.
(AP, 1/8/04)(WSJ, 1/8/04, p.A1)(AP, 11/30/05)
2004 Jan 7, Haiti university
students marched against Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, sparking clashes
that left at least 2 dead amid a swelling opposition movement against
the leader.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, In Iran a 57-year-old
man was pulled from the rubble of Ban's earthquake, barely conscious
but still alive because he had a source of water during the 13 days he
was buried. He died 4 days later.
(AP, 1/8/04)(AP, 1/11/04)
2004 Jan 7, L. Paul Bremer, the
top American civilian official in Iraq, said U.S. authorities will
release 506 low-level Iraqi prisoners while increasing the bounties for
fugitives suspected of major roles in attacks against coalition forces.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, Israeli soldiers
patrolling West Bank towns shot and killed 3 Palestinian militants
during an ongoing sweep of the area.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, Najib Razak, a veteran
politician, was named as Malaysia's deputy PM.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, Mauritania armed
security force members stopped racers from the famed Paris-Dakar Rally,
demanding $65 from each vehicle to pass the border. The 26th
Paris-Dakar race crosses 6,920.4-miles, seven countries and the Sahara
Desert, ending Jan. 18 outside the Senegalese capital, Dakar
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 7, Morocco pardoned 33
prisoners, including a prominent journalist.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, In Scotland Stephen
Gough (44) was convicted of breaching the peace and sentenced to three
months in jail for trying to walk the length of Britain naked to
promote public nudity.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, Ingrid Thulin
(b.1926), Swedish actress, died in Stockholm. Her films included
"Foreign Intrigue" (1956).
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.A21)
2004 Jan 8, The journal Science
reported high levels of dangerous chemicals in farmed salmon. Wild
Pacific salmon had 10 times less than the farmed ones.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.A2)
2004 Jan 8, Pressure in the Int'l.
Space Station continued to drop.
(WSJ, 1/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 8, Queen Elizabeth II
christened the world's largest ocean liner, the Queen Mary 2.
(AP, 1/8/04)
2004 Jan 8, Chinese state media
reported that authorities had dismissed 44,701 police between August
and November in 2003 for lacking job qualifications, corruption or
other offenses in a campaign to raise policing standards.
(AP, 1/8/04)
2004 Jan 8, Authorities in
Georgia's autonomous region of Adzharia imposed a state of emergency,
fearing the newly elected Georgian president may try to rein in the
province.
(AP, 1/8/04)
2004 Jan 8, India unveiled a broad
range of tax cuts.
(WSJ, 1/9/04, p.A6)
2004 Jan 8, In Iraq a US Black
Hawk medivac helicopter crashed near Fallujah killing all nine soldiers
aboard.
(AP, 1/8/04)
2004 Jan 8, Libya agreed to
compensate family members of victims of a 1989 bombing of a French
passenger plane over the Niger desert that killed 170 people.
(AP, 1/8/05)
2004 Jan 8, In Kenya a new
agreement, between the Ministry of Education and the country's largest
and oldest orphanage for HIV-positive children, allowed a group of
children infected with the virus that causes AIDS to attend public
schools.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2004 Jan 8, Teams of Swiss police
in 5 cantons arrested 8 suspected accomplices in the May 12 al Qaeda
car bomb attack in Saudi Arabia.
(SFC, 1/10/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 8, It was reported that
Thailand's PM Thaksin Shinawatra had ordered the Finance Ministry and
stock exchange to set up a task force to examine the balance sheets of
listed companies.
(WSJ, 1/8/04, p.A14)
2004 Jan 8, Turkey and the US
agreed to reopen the Incirlik air base for Iraq operations.
(WSJ, 1/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 9, The US terror alert
level was lowered one step, to yellow. However, airports and airlines
kept their high alert status.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 9, US Officials said
Pentagon lawyers had determined that former Iraq leader Saddam Hussein
was a prisoner of war since his capture.
(AP, 1/9/05)
2004 Jan 9, Federal officials
arrested 2 people in southern California for conspiring to perform
genital mutilations on 2 girls. It was the 1st prosecution under the
1995 federal Female Genital Mutilation Act.
(SFC, 1/10/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 9, An Ohio woman who'd
claimed to have lost a lottery ticket worth $162 million was charged
with filing a false police report. Elecia Battle was later convicted of
the misdemeanor and put on one year's probation.
(AP, 1/9/05)
2004 Jan 9, Royal Dutch/Shell
announced that it overstated its proven reserves and planned to slash
estimates by 20%.
(WSJ, 4/20/04, p.A12)
2004 Jan 9, A new Swen-style
Trojan horse, dubbed Trojan.Xombe and posing as a critical update from
Microsoft, was detected on the Internet.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 9, An inflatable
speedboat packed with Albanian migrants trying to sneak into Italy sank
in up to 20-foot high waves and strong winds off Albania's coast,
killing 21 people.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2004 Jan 9, In southeastern Brazil
floodwaters swept a bus carrying 30 orange pickers off a road, and at
least eight people drowned.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2004 Jan 9, In Colombia a FARC
rebel, aka Jeremias, suspected of killing a Japanese hostage last year
died in a shootout with the army outside Bogota.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 9, In Ecuador about 20
women inmates stripped off clothing and protested from their Guayaquil
Prison roof, claiming they've been held for more than a year without
trial and should be freed.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 9, Estonian prosecutors
said they have launched an investigation into whether Michael Gorshkow,
an 80-year-old former U.S. resident, took part in the massacre of 3,000
Jews during World War II. Gorshkow (19) allegedly helped murder Jews in
the Slutsk ghetto of Belarus in 1943 while serving as an interpreter
and interrogator for the Gestapo.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 9, The German Neuzeller
Kloster Brewery announced plans to introduce its "Anti-Aging-Bier" this
year and sell it in grocery and drug stores.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 9, In Baqouba, Iraq, an
explosion ripped through a busy street as worshippers streamed out of a
Shiite Muslim mosque, killing 5 people and wounding dozens of others.
US soldiers in Kirkuk killed 2 Iraqi police officers.
(AP, 1/9/04)(SFC, 1/10/04, p.A8)(SSFC, 1/11/04, p.A7)
2004 Jan 9, Israeli troops swept
into the West Bank town of Jenin, making arrests and trading gunfire
with militants.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 9, Norberto Bobbio (94),
an Italian liberal philosopher, essayist and senator for life, died in
Turin. One of his most important books is the 1955 "Politica e Cultura"
("Politics and Culture"). A 1994 essay, called "Destra e Sinistra"
("Left and Right"), was his best-selling work.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2004 Jan 9, In Kashmir a hand
grenade exploded at a mosque, wounding at least 15 worshippers who had
gathered for prayers.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 9, Libya signed a $170
million compensation accord with families of people who died in the
1989 bombing of a French jetliner.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 9, Russia and Kazakhstan
extended Moscow's lease of the launching pad in Baikonur until 2050. It
served as the only link to the troubled International Space Station.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 9, In South Africa Pres.
Mbeki signed the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act. It imposed
a host of obligations on companies that wished to do business with the
government.
(www.labour.gov.za/useful_docs/doc_display.jsp?id=9479)(Econ, 4/8/06,
Survey p.8)
2004 Jan 10, Michelle Kwan won her
seventh straight title and eighth overall at the U.S. Figure Skating
Championships in Atlanta; Johnny Weir skated to his first men's title.
(AP, 1/10/05)
2004 Jan 10, Spalding Gray (62),
morose humorist, disappeared in NYC. His body was found in the East
River in March.
(SFC, 2/09/04, p.A2)
2004 Jan 10, Alexandra Ripley
(70), novelist, died in Richmond, Va.
(AP, 1/10/05)
2004 Jan 10, Fiona Thornewill
(37), a British woman, completed her unaided solo hike to the South
Pole in record time. She walked 700 miles in 42 days broking the
previous record of 44 days for an unaided individual or team for
walking or skiing.
(AP, 1/12/04)
2004 Jan 10, China reported a 3rd
suspected SARS infection involved a 35-year-old man in Guangdong
province.
(AP, 1/11/04)(WSJ, 1/13/04, p.D5)
2004 Jan 10, In Ghana the United
Nations launched a yearlong commemoration of the anti-slavery movement.
The International Year for the Commemoration of the Struggle Against
Slavery and its Abolition coincides with the 200-year anniversary of
Haiti, the first independent black state in the Western Hemisphere.
(AP, 1/11/04)
2004 Jan 10, A US anti-terror team
arrived in Mauritania. The US had received information of threats
against American interests in the West African nations of Mauritania
and Senegal.
(AP, 1/12/04)
2004 Jan 10, North Korea said it
had shown its "nuclear deterrent" to an unofficial U.S. delegation that
visited the disputed Yongbyon nuclear complex.
(AP, 1/10/05)
2004 Jan 10, Panamanian officials
arrested Arcangel de Jesus Henao Montoya, a top leader of the Colombian
Norte de Valle drug cartel, in the southern city of Torti and took him
to Panama City. He was soon handed over to US officials.
(AP, 1/11/04)(SFC, 1/15/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 10, In the Philippines 3
rebels and 4 soldiers died when the guerrilla New People's Army
attacked a power plant south of Manila.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2004 Jan 10, A conference on
U.S.-Islamic relations began in Qatar. Washington's support for Israel
is at the root of differences between the United States and Islamic
nations.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2004 Jan 10, In South Korea
prosecutors arrested six lawmakers and the head of a conglomerate in a
broadening investigation of corruption allegations.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2002 Jan 10, Pres. Mugabe enacted
sweeping security and election laws to clamp down on critics and limit
election monitoring. Iden Wetherell, editor of the Zimbabwe
Independent, was arrested along with 2 staff members on charges of
defaming Mugabe.
(SFC, 1/11/02, p.A5)(WPR, 3/04, p.29)
2004 Jan 11, Former Treasury Sec.
Paul O'Neill charged in a new book that Pres. Bush entered office in
Jan. 2001 intent on invading Iraq and was in search of a way to go
about it. Former WSJ reporter Ron Suskind wrote "The Price of
Loyalty," based on 7,630 journal entries provided by O'Neill.
(AP, 1/11/04)(WSJ, 1/12/04, p.B1)(WSJ, 1/16/04, p.W6)
2004 Jan 11, Democrat Howard Dean
defended his record on race in the last debate before the Iowa
caucuses, as he was forced to acknowledge that no blacks or Hispanic
had served in his cabinet during his 12 years as governor of Vermont.
(AP, 1/11/05)
2004 Jan 11, In Iran the 12-member
Guardian Council, which comprises conservatives picked by Iran's
supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, disqualified about 900 of the
1,700 people who wanted to contest seats in Tehran have been
disqualified. About 90 lawmakers began gathering in the lobby of the
legislature for five hours daily in a sit-in demonstration after the
Guardian Council barred the candidates from the Feb. 20 elections.
(AP, 1/12/04)(AP, 1/14/04)
2004 Jan 11, U.S. paratroopers
captured Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, a former regional Baath Party
chairman and militia commander a former Baath Party official who was
No. 54 on the list of 55 most-wanted figures from Saddam Hussein's
regime.
(AP, 1/14/04)
2004 Jan 11, Danish and Icelandic
troops reported a cache of 36 shells buried in the Iraqi desert, and
preliminary tests showed they contained a liquid blister agent. The
120mm mortar shells are thought to be left over from the eight-year war
between Iraq and neighboring Iran, which ended in 1988.
(AP, 1/11/04)
2004 Jan 12, President Bush and
Mexican President Vicente Fox forged agreement on the contentious
issues of immigration and Iraq, meeting in Monterrey before the opening
of a 34-nation hemispheric summit.
(AP, 1/12/05)
2004 Jan 12, It was reported that
a new US Homeland Security program planned to screen airline passengers
according to a color code based on computerized data.
(SFC, 1/13/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 12, The US Supreme Court
refused to hear on appeal by civil liberties groups seeking access to
basic data of individuals detained indefinitely by the government after
the Sep. 11, 2001, attacks.
(SFC, 1/13/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 12, Randy VanWarmer (48),
singer-songwriter, died in Seattle.
(AP, 1/12/05)
2004 Jan 12, In Afghanistan dozens
of suspected Taliban fighters armed with assault rifles attacked a
police checkpoint and killed four policemen.
(AP, 1/12/04)
2004 Jan 12, Juan Barrionuevo,
Argentine legislator from Tierra del Fuego, was arrested and charged
with committing crimes and torture during the 1976-83 military
dictatorship.
(WPR, 3/04, p.26)
2004 Jan 12, In Burundi Hutu
rebels killed 17 people, including five soldiers, in attacks northwest
of Bujumbura over the last 2 days.
(AP, 1/13/04)
2004 Jan 12, The $780 million
Queen Mary 2 departed Southampton, England, for Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The ship was built by Chantieres de l'Atlantique in St. Nazaire, France.
(WSJ, 10/2/03, p.A1)
2004 Jan 12, A roadside bomb
explosion in Baghdad killed one U.S. soldier and wounded two, bringing
the American death toll to nearly 500 since the start of fighting in
March. US soldiers killed an Iraqi man and a boy driving in a car
behind a convoy after a roadside bomb went off nearby.
(AP, 1/12/04)(SFC, 1/13/04, p.A10)
2004 Jan 12, It was reported that
China might inject $40 billion into its Industrial and Commercial Bank.
2 other state-run lenders, Bank of China and China Construction Bank,
split $45 billion in transfers from foreign exchange reserves a week
earlier.
(WSJ, 1/12/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 12, In northwest Colombia
suspected FARC rebels using a grenade launcher and guns killed at least
five paramilitary fighters inside a bar in Anza.
(AP, 1/13/04)
2004 Jan 12, A 2-day meeting began
for leaders of the 34 members of the Organization of American States
opened in Monterrey, Mexico.
(AP, 1/12/04)
2004 Jan 12, The United States
announced plans to return to Peru $20 million stolen by a corrupt
government official and stashed in U.S. bank accounts. In December,
Peru accused Victor Venero Garrido of hiding the money in U.S. accounts
under the guidance of Vladimiro Montesinos.
(AP, 1/12/04)
2004 Jan 12, In the Philippines a
huge fire in a Manila shantytown hurt at least 23 people, destroyed
thousands of homes and left about 25,000 residents homeless.
(AP, 1/12/04)
2004 Jan 12, Olga Ladyzhenskaya
(81), Russian mathematician, died. Her studies in differential
equations helped improve weather forecasts and advance other fields of
science.
(AP, 1/27/04)
2004 Jan 13, The US Supreme Court
endorsed the use of police road blocks as an investigational tool for
finding witnesses to recent crimes.
(SFC, 1/14/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 13, A Human Rights Watch
report said more than $4 billion in oil revenue disappeared from
Angolan state coffers between 1997 and 2002, even as the country was
struggling to recover from 27 years of civil war.
(AP, 1/13/04)
2004 Jan 13, In Maryland a fiery
explosion killed five on the northbound lanes of Interstate 95. A
tanker carrying flammable material plunged off an overpass on
Interstate 895, landing in the northbound lane of I-95.
(AP, 1/14/04)
2004 Jan 13, Canada's PM Paul
Martin met U.S. President George W. Bush officially for the 1st time.
Bush announced that Canada will be allowed into a second round of
bidding for contracts to rebuild Iraq.
(AP, 1/13/04)
2004 Jan 13, The European
Commission proposed an initiative aimed at creating a single market for
services within the European Union (EU), similar to the single market
for goods act of 1986. It came to be known as Bolkestein
Directive after the Dutch Commissioner Frits Bolkestein (b.1933), who
launched it. Trade unions opposed it. On 16 February 2006, the European
Parliament in plenary session in Strasbourg voted in favor of a
compromise proposal that went a long way towards meeting the trade
union demands.
(www.etuc.org/a/499)
2004 Jan 13, A US soldier at Abu
Ghraib prison reported US abuses of Iraqi prisoners. Criminal charges
were lodged against 6 soldiers on Mar 20. In 2005 Spc. Charles Graner
was convicted on 5 counts of assault and sentenced to 10 years in a
military stockade. Graner said he had operated under orders from
superior officers.
(SFC, 5/6/04, p.A17)(AP, 1/13/05)(SSFC, 1/16/05,
p.A1)
2004 Jan 13, Hostile fire brought
down a U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter in Iraq, but the two crew
members escaped injury.
(AP, 1/13/05)
2004 Jan 13, In Mexico the
34-nation Summit of the Americas ended. The United States reached out
to its neighbors on free trade and battling corruption, smoothing tense
relations with Latin American leaders.
(AP, 1/13/04)(SFC, 1/14/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 13, In northern England
Dr. Harold Shipman was found hanged in his Wakefield prison cell one
day before his 58th birthday. He was convicted in 2000 of killing 15
patients and later was found to have murdered at least 200 more, mostly
by lethal injection. He always maintained his innocence.
(AP, 1/13/04)
2004 Jan 13, A Dutch high school
student walked into his school's crowded cafeteria and shot Hans van
Wieren (49), an economics teacher, point-blank in the head, fatally
wounding him.
(AP, 1/13/04)
2004 Jan 13, A senior Swaziland
aide said King Mswati III has ordered nine palaces built within
existing royal compounds to house seven of his 10 wives and two future
brides. Some $15 million of his impoverished kingdom's national budget
would be used on the project.
(AP, 1/13/04)
2004 Jan 13, Thai and Malaysian
military forces began joint land and air patrols along their jungle
border for the first time since the 1970s.
(AP, 1/14/04)
2004 Jan 13, In Tashkent,
Uzbekistan, a domestic airliner crashed on approach to the airport. All
37 people, including the top U.N. official for Uzbekistan, were killed.
(AP, 1/13/04)
2004 Jan 14, Pres. Bush proposed a
new space program that would send humans back to the moon by 2015 and
establish a base to Mars and beyond. Bush said he would seek $12
billion for the initial stages of the plan.
(SFC, 1/15/04, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/15/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 14, Andrew Fastow, former
Enron finance chief, agreed to a 10-year prison sentence and to help
prosecutors build a case against Enron's executive officers. His wife,
former Enron assistant treasurer Lea Fastow (42), received a 5-month
prison sentence.
(SFC, 1/15/04, p.B3)
2004 Jan 14, J.P. Morgan reported
plans to take over Bank One Corp. for $58 billion in stock.
(WSJ, 1/15/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 14, Former Pres. Clinton
announced an agreement with 5 medical technology companies to reduce
the cost of tests for HIV-AIDS treatment in Africa and the Caribbean.
(SFC, 1/15/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 14, The US Army launched
an inquiry into conditions at Abu Ghraib prison a day after photos of
abused prisoners were passed up the chain of command.
(WSJ, 5/7/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 14, Joaquin Nin-Culmell
(95), composer and younger brother of writer Anais Nin, died in
Berkeley, Ca.
(SFC, 1/16/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 14, Uta Hagen (84),
German-born Broadway actress, died. Her work included the role of
Martha in the 1962 Albee play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe."
(SFC, 1/16/04, p.A23)
2004 Jan 14, Ron O'Neal (66), star
of the 1972 film "Superfly," died in Los Angeles.
(SFC, 1/16/04, p.A3)(SFC, 1/17/04, p.A17)(AP,
1/14/05)
2004 Jan 14, In Canada a freight
train traveling over a bridge east of Toronto derailed sending massive
containers plummeting onto the road, killing two women in a van who
were driving by.
(AP, 1/15/04)
2004 Jan 14, In Iraq a suicide
bomber detonated a bomb at a police station in Baqouba that killed 2
passers-by and wounded 26 others.
(SFC, 1/15/04, p.A8)
2004 Jan 14, A UN agency said
Libya has ratified the nuclear test ban treaty. The treaty is 12
nations short of the 44 ratifications needed for it to enter into
force. Once it comes into force, the treaty bans any nuclear weapon
test explosion in any environment.
(AP, 1/14/04)
2004 Jan 14, Reem al-Reyashi (22),
Palestinian mother of two, blew herself up at the main crossing point
between Israel and the Gaza Strip, killing at least 4 Israelis and
wounding 7 other people.
(AP, 1/14/04)(SFC, 1/15/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 14, In Spain Mohammed
Kamal Mustafa, imam of the southern town of Fuengirola, was given a
suspended sentence of to 15 months in prison. Spanish women's
associations hailed the conviction of the Islamic cleric who advised
Muslims how to beat their wives.
(AP, 1/15/04)
2004 Jan 15, Carol Moseley Braun
ended her White House run, leaving an all-male field for the presidency
and giving her support to Democratic front-runner Howard Dean.
(AP, 1/15/04)
2004 Jan 15, The NASA Spirit rover
rolled onto the surface of Mars for the first time since the vehicle
bounced to a landing nearly two weeks earlier.
(AP, 1/15/05)
2004 Jan 15, Olivia Goldsmith
(54), author of "The First Wives Club" (1992), died in NYC of
complications from plastic surgery. Her book became a revenge fantasy
for wives tossed aside in favor of younger women. It became a No. 1
film in 1996 starring Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler.
(AP, 1/16/04)(SFC, 1/17/04, p.A17)
2004 Jan 15, In Argentina Pres.
Nestor Kirchner ordered an investigation into charges the army operated
training camps on torture techniques during the mid-80s.
(AP, 1/16/04)
2004 Jan 15, In Australia regular
train service from Adelaide to Darwin in 43 hours was set to begin.
Plans for the Transcontinental line had begun in 1911.
(SSFC, 10/26/03, p.A1)
2004 Jan 15, Manik Saha (49), a
Bangladeshi reporter for the New Age newspaper and the BBC, was leaving
a press club when unidentified attackers hurled a bomb at him. He was
the first journalist in the world to be murdered in 2004.
(AP, 1/16/04)
2004 Jan 15, Ecuador's government
declared a state of emergency in the prison system after a series of
protests.
(AP, 2/18/04)
2004 Jan 15, India and Pakistan,
resumed rail services across their border. The frontier had been closed
for 2 years.
(SFC, 1/16/04, p.A16)
2004 Jan 15, Iraqi bank notes
bearing Saddam Hussein's portrait became obsolete as a three-month
period to exchange old bills for new ones came to an end. The new
currency required 27 flights of 747 planes for delivery.
(AP, 1/15/04)(WSJ, 1/20/04, p.A14)
2004 Jan 15, In Karachi, Pakistan,
a car bomb blew up outside a Christian Bible society, injuring 12
people.
(AP, 1/15/04)
2004 Jan 15, Amnesty Int'l. said
more than 400 prisoners have been hanged since 1991 in Singapore,
mostly for drug offenses. The London-based rights report on Singapore
was entitled "A Hidden Toll of Executions."
(AP, 1/15/04)(WSJ, 1/16/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 16, Pres. Bush
sidestepped Congress and installed Mississippi judge Charles Pickering
to the federal appeals court after a two-year battle filled with
racial, religious and regional argument.
(AP, 1/16/04)
2004 Jan 16, Paul Bremmer, the
U.S. administrator in Iraq, said the US will revise its plan to create
self-rule in Iraq, following consultations with President Bush.
(AP, 1/16/04)
2004 Jan 16, The US Army awarded
Halliburton a 2-year contract worth up to $1.2 billion to rebuild the
oil industry in southern Iraq.
(SFC, 1/17/04, p.A8)
2004 Jan 16, Pop star Michael
Jackson pleaded innocent to child molestation charges during a court
appearance in Santa Maria, Calif. The judge scolded Jackson for being
21 minutes late.
(AP, 1/16/05)
2004 Jan 16, Starbucks opened its
1st coffee shop in France.
(Econ, 1/17/04, p.67)
2004 Jan 16, Bone-chilling arctic
winds and record low temperatures swept the US Northeast.
(WSJ, 1/16/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 16, NASA said it would
not send another shuttle mission to service and repair the Hubble Space
Telescope.
(SFC, 1/17/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 16, A Canadian regulator
ruled that a song lauding the joys of an "enormous penis" is not
obscene because the object of the lyric's affection isn't necessarily
sexual.
(AP, 1/16/04)
2004 Jan 16, Kalevi Sorsa (73),
Finland's longest serving prime minister, died. Sorsa headed four
coalition governments from 1972 to 1987 and led the Social Democrats,
Finland's largest party, for 12 years.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 16, In Bombay, India,
activists gathered for the 6-day World Social Forum. The meeting, which
attracts activists, political workers and intellectuals from around the
world, is meant to be a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum in
Switzerland later this month.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 16, Hamas founder Ahmed
Yassin brushed off warnings by a top Israeli official that he is
"marked for death" and, in a defiant appearance at a Gaza City mosque,
and said his Islamic militant group will continue to attack Israelis.
(AP, 1/16/04)
2004 Jan 17, Ray Stark (88),
Hollywood producer, died. His films included "Funny Girl," based on the
life of Broadway singer Fanny Brice, his mother-in-law.
(SSFC, 1/18/04, p.A14)
2004 Jan 17, A U.S. helicopter
attacked a house in Saghatho village in southern Afghanistan, killing
11 people, four of them children. The US military said that only 5
militants were killed. President Hamid Karzai later said 10 Afghan
civilians were killed in the US strike.
(AP, 1/19/04)(SFC, 1/20/04, p.A3)(AP, 1/31/04)
2004 Jan 17, In Brazil the death
toll rose to 11 as heavy rains and mudslides pounded the Brazilian
state of Rio de Janeiro for the second day in a row.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 17, A Cessna 208 regional
plane carrying hunters went down in Lake Erie about one mile west of
Pelee Island, Canada. All 9 aboard were killed.
(AP, 1/18/04)(WSJ, 1/19/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 17, The Chinese
government confirmed two more SARS patients, bringing the total number
this year to three.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 17, A roadside bomb
exploded near Baghdad, killing three U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi civil
defense troopers. The number of American service members who have died
since the Iraq war began reached 500.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 17, An explosive device
being transported in a car exploded near a U.S. Army patrol in Tikrit,
killing two men in the vehicle, one of them a relative of Saddam
Hussein.
(AP, 1/18/04)
2004 Jan 17, In Guatemala Nobel
Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu said she will become one of new
President Oscar Berger's top officials in charge of monitoring
adherence to the U.N.-brokered peace accords that ended 36 years of
civil war.
(AP, 1/18/04)
2004 Jan 17, Indian soldiers and
Islamic rebels clashed in disputed Kashmir in two separate gunbattles
that killed eight guerrillas and two paramilitary soldiers.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 17, In Lebanon 3 killers
were executed and grenade blasts followed in Beirut's largest
Palestinian refugee camp.
(WSJ, 1/19/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 17, Myanmar's junta said
it freed 26 members of Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition National League
for Democracy party.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 17, Rafael Cordero
Santiago (61), the mayor of the Puerto Rican city of Ponce, died after
suffering a brain hemorrhage.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 18, The New England
Patriots earned their second trip to the Super Bowl in three seasons by
defeating the Indianapolis Colts 24-14 in the AFC championship game;
the Carolina Panthers defeated the Philadelphia Eagles, 14-3, in the
NFC championship game.
(AP, 1/18/05)
2004 Jan 18, London billionaire
twins Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay (69) announced their plan to
buy a controlling interest in Hollinger Inc., the Toronto-based parent
of publisher Hollinger Intl. led by Conrad Black. The sale was blocked
in Feb.
(ADN, 1/20/04, p.F2)(WSJ, 3/1/04, p.B4)
2004 Jan 18, In Georgia an
explosion at a scientific institute in Tbilisi killed two people and
injured two others. It occurred during a transfer of nitrogen, an
indication that a canister of the gas could have blown up.
(AP, 1/19/04)
2004 Jan 18, Marches in
Port-au-Prince, Haiti, continued against Pres. Aristide. Gunmen hiding
inside a state-run TV station killed at least one marcher and wounded
several other.
(SFC, 1/19/04, p.A3
2004 Jan 18, A suicide bomber blew
up a pickup truck packed with 1,000 pounds of explosives outside the
headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition, killed at least 31 people and
injuring about 120, most of them Iraqis.
(AP, 1/19/05)
2004 Jan 18, Pakistani agents
arrested seven al-Qaida suspects and confiscated weapons during a raid
in the southern city of Karachi.
(AP, 1/18/04)
2004 Jan 19, In the Iowa caucus
John Kerry led the Democrats with 38%, John Edwards was 2nd with 32%,
Howard Dean was 3rd with 18% and Dick Gephardt 4th with 11%. Entrance
polls showed that economic issues held top priority.
(SFC, 1/20/04, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 19, Connecticut Gov.
Rowland said he's looking forward to a legislative investigation on
charges that he accepted free gifts and work on a vacation cottage.
(USAT, 1/20/04, p.12A)(Econ, 1/17/04, p.25)
2004 Jan 19, In Algeria an
explosion at a liquefied natural gas (LNG) complex in the port city of
Skikda killed 23 and left 74 people injured.
(AP, 1/20/04)(WSJ, 5/14/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 19, The freighter MS
Rocknes capsized in a narrow inlet between the island of Bjoroey and
Norway's western coast, less than 200 yards from land after it put out
a distress call. The 30 crew members included 24 Filipinos, three
Dutch, two Norwegians and one German. 12 crew members were rescued. The
death toll was put at 18.
(AP, 1/20/04)(WSJ, 1/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 19, Tens of thousands of
Shiite Muslims marched peacefully in Baghdad to demand an elected
government.
(AP, 1/19/04)
2004 Jan 20, President Bush gave
his 3rd State of the Union address hailing progress fighting terrorism,
recharging the economy and helping Americans afford health care. He
embraced the conservative move to ban same-sex marriages and called for
making his tax cuts permanent.
(AP, 1/21/04)(SFC, 1/21/04, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 20, Democrat Dick
Gephardt abandoned his second bid for the presidency.
(AP, 1/20/04)
2004 Jan 20, Martha Stewart's
stock-trading trial formally began in New York. In 2005 Stewart was
serving a five-month prison sentence for lying about a stock sale.
(AP, 1/20/05)
2004 Jan 20, Salvation Army
officials announced a $1.5 billion donation by the late Joan Kroc
(d.2003), heiress to the McDonald's fortune, for 25-30 community
centers.
(SFC, 1/21/04, p.A16)(WSJ, 1/20/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 20, The Internet virus
called the "Bagle" or "Beagle" worm was reported to be arriving on
computers in an e-mail with the subject "hi" and the word "test" in the
message body.
(SFC, 1/21/04, p.B2)
2004 Jan 20, French transport
workers went on a 1-day train strike.
(AP, 1/21/04)
2004 Jan 20, In Indonesia blasts
rocked a chemical plant in Gresik, sparking a series of fires at the
complex that killed two people and injured nearly 70 others.
(AP, 1/20/04)
2004 Jan 20, In Iran Hard-line
authorities said they were reinstating 200 candidates barred from
running in next month's legislative elections and will reconsider the
cases of thousands more after fierce opposition from reformists who
threatened to boycott the vote.
(AP, 1/20/04)
2004 Jan 20, Israeli warplanes
struck Hezbollah guerrilla bases in southern Lebanon after a soldier
was killed there a day earlier.
(AP, 1/20/04)(WSJ, 1/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 20, Amnesty Int'l.
released a report at the World Social Forum in Bombay, India, that
charged North Korea with public executions of people stealing food.
(SFC, 1/21/04, p.A12)
2004 Jan 20, Asha Keita-Conneh,
the wife of the leader of Liberia's most powerful rebel movement
announced she was taking charge, backed by dozens of guerrilla
commanders in ousting a husband whose ambitions she said were
endangering the nation's hard-won peace.
(AP, 1/20/04)
2004 Jan 20, In Mexico gunmen
ambushed and shot to death two federal agents and an army captain as
they drove along a Mexico City expressway.
(AP, 1/21/04)
2004 Jan 21, President Bush
visited community colleges in Ohio and Arizona, where he highlighted
the economy and several new job-training initiatives he'd proposed a
day earlier in his State of the Union speech.
(AP, 1/21/05)
2004 Jan 21, Ohio lawmakers gave
final approval to a measure banning gay marriage and prohibiting state
employees from getting benefits for domestic partners. Gov. Bob Taft
said he would sign it pending a legal review.
(SFC, 1/22/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 21, The recording
industry sued 532 computer users it said were illegally distributing
songs over the Internet.
(AP, 1/21/05)
2004 Jan 21, Hong Kong officials
reported that Avian influenza was detected near 2 chicken farms. 5
people in Vietnam had already died from the recent outbreak.
(SFC, 1/22/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 21, Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew arrived in Cuba to consecrate St. Nicholas Cathedral
on Jan. 25, said Metropolitan Athenagoras of Panama and Central
America. There were 1,200 practicing Orthodox Christians in Cuba.
(AP, 1/15/04)
2004 Jan 21, The 6-day World
Social Forum ended in Bombay, India, as thousands marching against the
Iraq war. Some 80,000 people from a hundred countries participated in
the forum.
(SFC, 1/22/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 21, Most of Iran's
ministers and vice presidents submitted resignations to protest the
barring of thousands of would-be candidates from upcoming elections.
The Guardian Council had just reinstated 200 of the disqualified
candidates and said it would reconsider the rest.
(AP, 1/22/04)
2004 Jan 21, In central Iraq a
barrage of mortar fire struck a US military encampment, killing 2
American soldiers and critically wounding a third. In separate
incidents, gunmen ambushed a vehicle carrying Iraqi women who worked in
the laundry at a US military base, killing 4 of them,
(AP, 1/22/04)
2004 Jan 21, Israeli forces
demolished houses in Gaza's Rafah refugee camp for the second straight
day in an anti-militant clampdown that has left 400 people homeless. A
Palestinian woman was killed.
(AP, 1/21/04)(WSJ, 1/22/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 22, US Congress approved
an $820 billion spending bill. It included a labeling law for the
seafood industry for "country of origin."
(SFC, 1/23/04, p.A3)(SFC, 2/4/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 22, South Dakota
politician Bill Janklow was sentenced to 100 days in jail for an auto
accident that killed a motorcyclist and ended Janklow's career in
disgrace.
(AP, 1/22/05)
2004 Jan 22, Enron Corporation's
former top accountant, Richard Causey, surrendered to federal
authorities; he pleaded innocent to conspiracy and fraud charges.
(AP, 1/22/05)
2004 Jan 22, James Paul Lewis (58)
of Villa Park, Ca., was arrested by FBI agents at a hotel in Houston
for allegedly bilking several thousand victims out of millions of
dollars in a massive Ponzi scheme. In 2005 he pleaded guilty to mail
fraud and money laundering.
(www.usdoj.gov/usao/cac/pr2004/014.html)
2004 Jan 22, It was reported that
Kodak, headquartered in Rochester, NY, planned to cut its work force by
as much as 21% by the end of 2006.
(WSJ, 1/22/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 22, NASA said it lost
contact with the Mars spirit rover.
(WSJ, 1/23/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 22, Ann Miller (81), tap
dancing film actress, died in Los Angeles.
(SFC, 1/23/04, p.A2)(AP, 1/22/05)
2004 Jan 22, In Cambodia gunmen
assassinated Chea Vichea, a prominent labor leader linked to the main
opposition party, as he read a newspaper on a capital street.
(AP, 1/22/04)
2004 Jan 22, The Chinese New Year
(Lunar Year 4702) ushered in the Year of the Monkey. In Korea the event
is called Solnal and in Vietnam it is called Tet. The Chinese New Year
marked a traditional time of settling debts. Migrant workers in the
Chinese construction industry were reportedly owed over $40 billion in
back pay.
(WSJ, 1/19/04, p.A1)(SFC, 1/22/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 22, In Iraq gunmen firing
from a van killed two Iraqi policemen and wounded three others in an
attack on a checkpoint between Fallujah and Ramadi.
(AP, 1/22/04)
2004 Jan 22, Israeli soldiers shot
and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian boy as he and six other unarmed
teenagers tried to sneak from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
(AP, 1/22/04)
2004 Jan 22, A Philippine tribunal
ordered the immediate transfer to the government of $683 million in
illegally accumulated funds from Swiss bank accounts of former dictator
Ferdinand Marcos.
(AP, 1/22/04)
2004 Jan 22, In Tanzania Judge
William Sekule said the tribunal found Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda (51),
former minister for culture and higher education, guilty of genocide
and extermination for his role the 1994 Rwanda genocide. He was
acquitted of eight other charges of crimes against humanity.
(AP, 1/22/04)
2004 Jan 22, In southern Thailand
a Buddhist monk was hacked to death. Muslim extremists were blamed.
(WSJ, 1/23/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 22, Zimbabwe's only
independent daily newspaper brought out a slim edition that was
snatched up by readers after a court ordered police to allow the
popular Daily News to resume publishing.
(AP, 1/22/04)
2004 Jan 23, The enduring
situation comedy "Friends" filmed its final episode in front of an
invitation-only audience.
(AP, 1/23/05)
2004 Jan 23, US District Judge in
LA, Aubrey Collins, ruled that a part of the Patriot Act, that makes it
a crime to give expert advice to foreign terrorist organizations, was
unconstitutional.
(SFC, 1/27/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 23, It was reported that
Halliburton told the Pentagon that 2 employees took kickbacks at up to
$6 million from a Kuwaiti-based company for supplying US troops in Iraq.
(SFC, 1/23/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 23, The Illinois Supreme
Court upheld former Gov. George Ryan's powers to commute sentences,
keeping 32 spared inmates off death row.
(AP, 1/23/05)
2004 Jan 23, Bob Keeshan (76), who
gently entertained and educated generations of children as television's
walrus-mustachioed Captain Kangaroo, died. Keeshan's "Captain Kangaroo"
debuted on CBS television in 1955 and ran for 30 years before moving to
public TV for 6 more.
(AP, 1/23/04)
2004 Jan 23, Helmut Newton (83),
fashion photographer, died in a car accident in LA.
(SFC, 1/23/04, p.A2)
2004 Jan 23, Vasili Mitrokhin
(81), a KGB archivist whose defection opened up thousands of spy
agency’s files to the West, died. He had been living in Britain under a
false name and with police protection since his defection in 1992.
(www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20040131/world.htm)
2004 Jan 23, A bomb planted in a
meeting room exploded after a gathering of the Iraqi Communist Party,
killing two men in an apparent attack on supporters of the U.S.-backed
government
(AP, 1/23/04)
2004 Jan 23, A Greek-owned cargo
ship laden with cement sank near the Mediterranean island of Malta,
Greece's Merchant Marine Ministry said. Two crewmen were rescued, but
15 were missing.
(AP, 1/24/04)
2004 Jan 23, A fire tore through a
wedding hall in southern India, killing 45 people, including the groom,
and injuring the bride and dozens of guests.
(AP, 1/23/04)
2004 Jan 23,The World Economic
Forum began in Davos, Switzerland. The war in Iraq and the threat of
terrorism dominated the Forum as the US appealed for cooperation on
both issues and the U.N. chief warned that an overly narrow focus could
worsen global tensions.
(AP, 1/24/04)
2004 Jan 24, Howard Dean sharply
questioned John Kerry's judgment on Iraq as Democratic presidential
rivals raced through a final weekend of campaigning before the New
Hampshire primary.
(AP, 1/24/05)
2004 Jan 24, NASA's Opportunity
rover landed on Mars, arriving at the Red Planet exactly three weeks
after its identical twin's landing.
(AP, 1/24/05)
2004 Jan 24, A car bomb exploded
in Khaldiya, a town west of Baghdad, killing three American soldiers
and injuring six soldiers and several Iraqi civilians. A series of
bombings killed 5 U.S. soldiers in the Sunni Triangle.
(AP, 1/25/04)(WSJ, 2/13/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 24, Israeli officials
said they would release over 400 Arab prisoners in a swap with
Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla group.
(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 24, Israeli troops shot
to death two Palestinian militants who entered an unauthorized military
zone near a security barrier separating Gaza from Israel.
(AP, 1/24/04)
2004 Jan 24, Qatar signed a $2.5
billion deal with Bechtel to begin construction of a new airport near
Doha.
(SFC, 1/27/04, p.B1)
2004 Jan 24, Some 2,000 opponents
of the World Economic Forum marched in Davos, Switz., to protest the
meeting, which they say is elitist and does nothing for ordinary people.
(AP, 1/24/04)
2004 Jan 24, In Bangkok, Thailand,
a world record for a mass jump was set by 672 skydivers from 42
countries who leaped from six aircraft.
(AP, 1/25/04)
2004 Jan 25, "The Lord of the
Rings: The Return of the King," the final installment of the epic
fantasy trilogy that hadn't yet won most major movie awards, finally
snared best dramatic film and three other trophies at the Golden
Globes. HBO's six-hour adaptation of "Angels in America" won best
miniseries or TV movie.
(AP, 1/26/05)
2004 Jan 25, Outgoing U.S. weapons
inspector David Kay told National Public Radio his inability to find
illicit arms in Iraq raised serious questions about U.S.
intelligence-gathering.
(AP, 1/25/05)
2004 Jan 25, NASA's Opportunity
rover zipped its first pictures of Mars to Earth, delighting and
puzzling scientists just hours after the spacecraft bounced to a
landing on the opposite side of the red planet from its twin rover,
Spirit.
(AP, 1/25/04)
2004 Jan 25, In Greenville, SC, a
fire at a Comfort Inn left 6 people dead.
(SFC, 1/26/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 25, Mikhail Saakashvili
was inaugurated as Georgia's president.
(AP, 1/25/05)
2004 Jan 25, In northern Iraq a US
helicopter crashed while searching for a river patrol boat that had
capsized on the Tigris. A soldier and 2 pilots were missing. 4 Iraqi
policemen manning a checkpoint outside Ramadi west of Baghdad were
killed in a drive-by shooting. Gunmen also killed three policemen at
another checkpoint in Ramadi. US soldiers arrested nearly 50 people and
confiscated weapons in several raids in Iraq's volatile Sunni Triangle.
Another soldier died of wounds from the previous day's attacks.
(AP, 1/25/04)(AP, 1/26/04)
2004 Jan 25, Rescuers in the
Philippines launched a massive search for 53 fishermen missing after
their boats were pounded by strong winds and high waves off three
northwestern provinces. At least two fishermen died.
(AP, 1/25/04)
2004 Jan 26, The White House
retreated from its once-confident claims that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction; Democrats swiftly sought to turn the about-face into an
election-year issue.
(AP, 1/26/05)
2004 Jan 26, The US Congressional
Budget Office said the deficits over the coming decade are expected to
total $2.4 trillion, 1 trillion more than estimates made 6 months
earlier.
(SFC, 1/27/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 26, Lionel Tate, the
Florida teen who'd killed a 6-year-old playmate and became the youngest
defendant in the nation to be locked away for life, was released after
three years behind bars.
(AP, 1/26/05)
2004 Jan 26, Cleveland City Hall
began a domestic partner's registry, the 1st in the nation created by
voters.
(SFC, 1/27/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 26, A pair of winter
storms blanketed much of the eastern half of the US and police blamed
them for at least 34 highway deaths.
(WSJ, 1/27/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 26, President Hamid
Karzai signed Afghanistan's new constitution into law, putting into
force a charter meant to reunite his war-shattered nation and help
defeat a virulent Taliban insurgency.
(AP, 1/26/04)
2004 Jan 26, China's President Hu
Jintao arrived in France, with European ministers considering Beijing's
request that they lift an arms embargo imposed after the killing of
Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989.
(AP, 1/26/04)
2004 Jan 26, Nearly 200 people
were missing after a barge caught fire and sank in a river in
northwestern Congo near Lukelela. At least 301 people survived.
(AP, 2/1/04)
2004 Jan 26, In Egypt an 11-story
building collapsed in Nasr City, a Cairo suburb, during a fire and at
least 14 people, mostly firefighters and police responding to a blaze,
were killed.
(AP, 1/27/04)
2004 Jan 26, Pakistan joined the
list of countries affected by the bird flu disease that has sparked
mass chicken culls across the region.
(AP, 1/26/04)
2004 Jan 26, Sudanese planes
dropped bombs in western Sudan, sending hundreds of people fleeing
across the border into Chad where aid workers scrambled to provide them
food and shelter in the barren desert.
(AP, 1/27/04)
2004 Jan 26, A 6-year-old Thai boy
became Asia's seventh confirmed bird flu fatality.
(AP, 1/26/04)
2004 Jan 27, In New Hampshire John
Kerry won the Democratic presidential primary with 39% of the vote.
Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, John Edwards and Joe Lieberman followed with
26, 12, 12, and 9%.
(SFC, 1/28/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 27, The case against
Martha Stewart (62) began in NYC. Prosecutors alleged that Stewart
intended to commit securities fraud in her Dec 21, 2001, sale of
ImClone Systems shares. She was convicted the following March and
sentenced to five months in prison.
(SFC, 2/28/04, p.A3)(AP, 1/27/05)
2004 Jan 27, A new Windows
computer virus, a self-propagating worm known as Mydoom or Novarg,
continued to spread over the Internet.
(SFC, 1/28/04, p.B1)
2004 Jan 27, Jack Paar (85), TV
host, died in Greenwich, Conn. The "Jack Paar Tonight Show" ran from
1957-1965 and "The Jack Paar Program" ran from 1962-1965. His 1960
memoir was titled "I Kid You Not," which was also his signature line.
(SFC, 1/28/04, p.A2)
2004 Jan 27, Global health
officials listed 6 countries with confirmed cases of H5N1 avian flu.
These included Cambodia, China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and
Vietnam.
(WSJ, 1/28/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 27, In Afghanistan a
Taliban suicide bomber struck a convoy of the NATO-led security force
in the capital, killing a Canadian soldier and an Afghan civilian.
(AP, 1/27/04)
2004 Jan 27, In Chechnya at least
8 Russian servicemen were killed and 16 others wounded in the latest
rebel raids and land mine explosions.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Jan 27, Wartime Croatian Serb
leader Milan Babic (1991-1992) pleaded guilty to persecution in a plan
to ethnically cleanse parts of Croatia of non-Serbs at the outset of
the Balkan wars, and expressed "a deep sense of shame" for his crimes.
Babic was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
(AP, 1/27/04)(WSJ, 6/30/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 27, Roadside bombs killed
6 US soldiers in 2 blasts outside Baghdad. 2 CNN employees were killed
in an ambush as their crew returned to Baghdad from southern Iraq.
(AP, 1/27/04)(SFC, 1/28/04, p.A9)
2004 Jan 27, In central Iraq US
soldiers killed 3 members of a suspected guerrilla cell linked to the
former Baathist regime.
(AP, 1/27/04)
2004 Jan 27, In Malaysia an
Iranian asylum seeker set himself on fire in an apparent suicide
attempt outside the Kuala Lumpur headquarters of the UN refugee agency.
(AP, 1/27/04)
2004 Jan 27, Mexican Army troops
arrested Javier Torres Felix, an alleged leader of one of the largest
drug trafficking organizations in western Mexico.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Jan 27, Mexican authorities
in Ciudad Juarez said at least 11 bodies were found at a house that had
been occupied by alleged drug lord Humberto Santillan Tabares.
(ST, 1/28/04, p.A8)
2004 Jan 28, David Kay, former
head of the CIA's weapons search team in Iraq, told Congress no weapons
of mass destruction had been found and that prewar intelligence was
"almost all wrong." In 2007 Bob Drogin authored “Curveball: Spies,
Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War.” Curveball was the code name
for an Iraqi chemical engineer who turned up in Germany in 1999 and
served as the source for Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons
programs.
(SSFC, 4/11/04, p.A22)(WSJ, 10/13/07, p.W8)(Econ,
11/3/07, p.100)
2004 Jan 28, A new strain of the
Mydoom virus emerged. Mydoom.B was programmed to launch an attack
against Microsoft's web site the following week.
(SFC, 1/29/04, p.B1)
2004 Jan 28, Scientists said they
had created a new form of matter, called a fermionic condensate, and
predicted it could help lead to the next generation of superconductors
for use in electricity generation, more efficient trains and countless
other applications. It is the sixth known form of matter, after gases,
solids, liquids, plasma and a Bose-Einstein condensate, created only in
1995.
(Reuters, 1/29/04)
2004 Jan 28, The UN was shut down
and more than one million children had the day off school on the heels
of a storm that dumped as much as 36 cm. of snow in the Northeast.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Jan 28, Lloyd “Pete” Bucher
(76), former U-S Navy commander who helped his USS “Pueblo” crew
survive brutal captivity in North Korea then faced criticism back home,
died in Poway, California.
(AP, 1/28/05)
2004 Jan 28, Elroy "Crazy Legs"
Hirsch (80), a pro football Hall of Famer and later the athletic
director at Wisconsin, died.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Jan 28, In Afghanistan a
suicide car bomber blew himself up in a taxi next to British
peacekeepers patrolling the Kabul, killing one soldier and wounding
four.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Jan 28, Arab prisoners began
their journey to Germany under a long-awaited prisoner swap between
Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Jan 28, Bosnia's
international administrator imposed a decree to unify the ethnically
divided city of Mostar, a precondition for Bosnia to join international
organizations and perhaps even the European Union.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Jan 28, British PM Tony Blair
won vindication when a judge said the BBC was wrong to report the
government had “sexed up” intelligence to justify war in Iraq.
(AP, 1/28/05)
2004 Jan 28, Businesses shut down,
schools closed and streets emptied for a 48-hour strike to protest the
Dominican Republic's worst economic crisis in decades.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Jan 28, In the Dominican
Republic at least 4 protesters died from gunshot wounds suffered in
clashes with security forces.
(AP, 1/29/04)
2004 Jan 28, In Haiti one student
was shot and killed as protests mounted against President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Jan 28, In Iraq some ten
thousand Shiite Muslims protested in the south to demand the
resignation of the U.S.-appointed provincial governor.
(AP, 1/29/04)
2004 Jan 28, In Iraq a suicide
bomber blew up a van disguised as an ambulance in front of the Shaheen
Hotel after speeding through a security barrier in the heart of
Baghdad, killing three people, including a South African, and injuring
17.
(AP, 1/28/04)(SFC, 1/28/04, p.A9)
2004 Jan 28, Israeli troops
clashed with Palestinian militants in fierce, prolonged street battles
across Gaza City, killing eight Palestinians.
(AP, 1/28/04)(SFC, 1/29/04, p.A7)
2004 Jan 28, Italian police said
they cracked a drug smuggling ring spanning four continents, arrested
more than 150 people and seized more than five tons of cocaine.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Jan 28, Nigeria said North
Korea had agreed to share its missile technology. Nigerian VP
Atiku Abubakar reached the accord with Yang Hyong Sop, the visiting VP
of North Korea's Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly. Nigeria
rejected the offer under US pressure.
(AP, 1/28/04)(WSJ, 2/4/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 29, The US freed 3
juvenile Afghan detainees (13-15) from Guantanamo, Cuba.
(WSJ, 1/30/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 29, In Afghanistan
an arms dump blast killed 8 American soldiers in a what was likely an
accident.
(SFC, 1/30/04, p.A3)(AP, 1/31/04)
2004 Jan 29, It was reported that
Angolan troops and police had driven at least 10,000 Congolese from
northern Angola's diamond zones in a bloody month-old campaign.
(AP, 1/30/04)
2004 Jan 29, M.M. Kaye (95),
British author, died in Lavenham, England.
(AP, 1/29/05)
2004 Jan 29, In Colombia gunmen
shot and killed Marta Lucia Hernandez, the director of one of
Colombia's most famous national parks. It was the second high-profile
attack in the coastal city of Santa Marta this week.
(AP, 1/30/04)
2004 Jan 29, Egypt expelled
American journalist Charles Levinson. He had written articles on
torture and deaths in Egyptian prisons. Levinson was allowed to return
in February.
(SFC, 2/19/04, p.A14)(SFC, 2/21/04, p.A2)
2004 Jan 29, In central Iraq a
roadside bomb exploded in Baqouba, wounding 11 Iraqis.
(AP, 1/29/04)
2004 Jan 29, Israel released 435
prisoners in a swap, mediated by Germany, with the Lebanese guerrilla
group Hezbollah in exchange for an Israeli businessman and the bodies
of 3 Israeli soldiers. The businessman was Elchanan Tannenbaum, a
colonel in Israel’s reserves, who was kidnapped in Dubai in 2000 and
had knowledge of an advanced Israeli weapons system.
(AP, 1/29/04)(Econ, 9/6/08, p.99)
2004 Jan 29, Janet Frame (b.1924),
author, died in Dunedin, New Zealand. Her books included “Faces in the
Water” (1961). Her 3-volume autobiography was dramatized in the 1990
film "An Angel at My Table."
(SFC, 1/31/04, p.A1)(Econ, 2/14/04, p.81)
2004 Jan 29, A Palestinian suicide
bomber detonated a bag of explosives on a crowded Jerusalem bus outside
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's residence, killing 10 passengers and
wounding 50 bystanders.
(AP, 1/29/04)
2004 Jan 29, In Saudi Arabia some
2 million Muslims from around the world gathered at the start of the
annual Hajj.
(AP, 1/29/04)
2004 Jan 29, Somalia's feuding
leaders signed an agreement to form a new government based along clan
lines, the first deal of its kind to include all armed groups that have
torn the country apart for the last 13 years.
(AP, 1/29/04)
2004 Jan 29, Widespread drought
was reported across southern Africa. Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa and
Zimbabwe were all affected.
(SFC, 1/29/04, p.A16)
2004 Jan 30, NASA’s Mars rover
Opportunity spied hints of a mineral that typically forms in water, a
finding that could mean Mars was once wetter and more hospitable to
life.
(AP, 1/30/05)
2004 Jan 30, The Chinese
government said audits aimed at ferreting out corruption in China
uncovered $8 billion in misused or embezzled funds and widespread
irregularities that produced "serious losses" of state assets.
(AP, 1/30/04)
2004 Jan 30, In remote
southwestern Ethiopia tribal fighting, sparked by a raid on a gold
mine, began. Over the following week nearly 200 people were killed and
some 10,000 others were forced to flee their homes.
(AP, 2/11/04)
2004 Jan 30, Alain Juppe, former
French PM (1995-1997), was found guilty in a party financing scandal
and declared ineligible for public office for 10 years.
(AP, 1/30/04)
2004 Jan 30, Iliad, a French
broadband firm founded by Xavier Niel, made a successful IPO. Niel was
briefly jailed a few months after its IPO, when it was discovered that
one of his sex shops was a front for prostituion. Niel was fully
exonerated, but was fined for receiving money from the shop.
(www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-4228042_ITM)
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.74)
2004 Jan 30, Iran's hard-line
Guardian Council reinstated a third of the candidates it had
disqualified from next month's legislative elections.
(AP, 1/30/04)
2004 Jan 30, In Japan a judge
ruled that Shuji Nakamura, inventor of the blue light-emitting diode
(LED), should share in the profits of his former employers. He was
awarded $190 million in a case against Nichia Corp.
(Econ, 2/7/04, p.60)
2004 Jan 30, A 25-30 seat
passenger plane plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off Lagos, Nigeria.
(AP, 1/30/04)
2004 Jan 30, In Peru VP Raul Diez
Canseco resigned amid allegations that he gave a tax break to his
girlfriend's father, a scandal that had forced him to step down as
trade minister two months earlier.
(AP, 1/31/04)
2004 Jan 30, It was reported that
Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange had filed their 1st suit against the
US companies that produced the toxic defoliant used by American forces
during the Vietnam War.
(AP, 2/4/04)
2004 Jan 31, The Mars rover
Opportunity rolled off its landing pad onto the surface of Mars.
(SSFC, 2/1/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 31, In Deh Rawood,
Afghanistan, a remote-controlled bomb, thought to have been planted by
Taliban or al-Qaida fighters, exploded as a southern Afghan mayor and
his family drove by, killing him and seven relatives.
(AP, 2/1/04)
2004 Jan 31, British Airways and
Air France announced the cancellation of seven flights to and from the
United States because of security concerns.
(AP, 1/31/04)
2004 Jan 31, China’s oil-refining
boss signed a deal to buy crude oil from Gabon. Pres. Hu Jintao visited
Gabon the next day.
(Econ, 2/7/04, p.45)
2004 Jan 31, Pres. Oscar Berger
said Guatemala will distribute 970 tons of food to some 77,000 people
in a bid to alleviate hunger in poverty-stricken towns.
(AP, 1/31/04)
2004 Jan 31, In Iraq a car bomb
targeting a police station in Mosul killed nine people and injured 45
others, while three American soldiers died when a roadside bomb ripped
through their convoy near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
(AP, 1/31/04)
2004 Jan 31, In southern Scotland
a fire broke out at nursing home, killing 10 residents and injuring six
others.
(AP, 1/31/04)
2004 Jan, The Millennium Challenge
Corporation was set up to improve the effectiveness of American
official aid.
(Econ, 3/15/08, p.84)(www.mcc.gov/about/index.php)
2004 Jan, The American Economic
Association met in San Diego and awarded its 2003 bi-annual John Bates
Clark medal (2003) to Steven Levitt of the Univ. of Chicago.
(Econ, 1/10/04, p.68)
2004 Jan, General Motors announced
the purchase of a 51% share of Delta Motors, South Africa’s 4th largest
car firm.
(Econ, 2/14/04, p.62)
2004 Jan, In Argentina the Pierre
Auger observatory began operating. It covered 3,000 square km. and was
named after the physicist who discovered extensive air showers induced
by high energy cosmic rays.
(Econ, 11/10/07,
p.100)(www.auger.org/news/PRagn/AGN_correlation_more.html)
2004 Jan, Morocco launched the
Arab world's 1st "truth commission." Mohammad VI appointed Driss
Benzekri (1950-2007), a former political prisoner, as head. Benzekri
was arrested for his left-wing student activities in 1974, and spent 17
years as a political prisoner until his release by Hassan II.
(WSJ, 1/29/04, p.A1)(SFC, 5/22/07, p.B5)
2004 Jan, Morocco’s parliament
passed legislation on women’s rights.
(WSJ, 8/10/04, p.B1)
2004 Jan, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a
former World Bank director and Nigeria’s new finance minister, promised
that the civil service would be cut by 40%, and that top bureaucrats
would have to pass exams.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.46)
2004 Jan, In Seoul, South Korea, 9
former prostitutes sued 8 brothel operators for $842,000 in overdue
wages and compensation for suffering. 7 of the girls were minors and
said they were forced into sexual slavery.
(WPR, 3/04, p.25)
2004 Jan, Sergiusz Kozubek (26),
creator of a website for the town of Koniakow, Poland,
(www.koniakow.com), began offering locally produced lace thongs, named
stringi, on the site. Women of this Silesian highlands town had
produced lace articles for the last 2 centuries.
(WSJ, 6/2/04, p.B2B)
2004 Feb 1, In Texas a breast
belonging to entertainer Janet Jackson escaped after singer Justin
Timberlake ripped off one of her chest plates during the halftime Super
Bowl performance in Houston. New England Patriots fans turned rowdy
after their team's 32-29 win over the Carolina Panthers. CBS' parent
company, Viacom, appealed a $550,000 fine.
(AP, 2/1/04)(SFC, 2/2/04, p.A2)(Econ, 2/7/04, p.55)
2004 Feb 1, In Sarasota, Florida,
Carlie Brucia (11) was abducted. Brucia, whose abduction was captured
by a surveillance camera, was found Feb 6 in a church parking lot, and
Joseph P. Smith, a mechanic, was charged with her murder. Smith (39)
was convicted of kidnapping, rape and murder on Nov 17, 2005. In 2006
Smith was sentenced to death.
(AP, 2/6/04)(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A3)(SFC, 11/18/05,
p.A3)(SFC, 3/16/06, p.A7)
2004 Feb 1, The first passenger
train to cross Australia from south to north set off on its three-day
journey, marking a new era of rail travel through the vast Outback.
Regular train service from Adelaide to Darwin would take 43 hours.
Plans for the Transcontinental line had begun in 1911.
(SSFC, 10/26/03, p.A1)(AP, 2/1/04)
2004 Feb 1, China reported 5 more
cases of the avian influenza virus.
(SFC, 2/2/04, p.A4)
2004 Feb 1, Tens of thousands of
government opponents marched peacefully to demand President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's resignation. A day earlier Aristide vowed to
disarm politically affiliated gangs, reform the police force and
implement other measures to end the country's recent unrest.
(AP, 2/1/04)
2004 Feb 1, More than a third of
the Iranian parliament resigned and the speaker delivered a stinging
rebuke to the hard-line Guardian Council for its disqualification of
hundreds of liberal candidates in upcoming elections.
(AP, 2/1/04)
2004 Feb 1, In Irbil, Iraq, 2
suicide bombers struck the offices of two U.S.-backed Kurdish parties
in near-simultaneous attacks as hundreds of Iraqis gathered to
celebrate a Muslim holiday. At least 101 people were killed and more
than 235 were wounded. Also about 20 Iraqis were killed when they
accidentally set off an explosion while looting a former Iraqi
munitions dump in the Polish-controlled south-central region of the
country.
(AP, 2/2/04)(WSJ, 2/4/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 1, Israeli troops riding
jeeps and a tank raided the biblical town of Jericho for the first time
in months, killing one Palestinian militant and forcing many residents
to stay inside at the start of the four-day Muslim holiday of Eid
al-Adha.
(AP, 2/1/04)
2004 Feb 1, In Tepeyac, Mexico, a
fight broke out between two families at an illegal cockfighting den,
and seven people were killed.
(AP, 2/3/04)
2004 Feb 1, In Saudi Arabia 251
Muslim worshipers died in a hajj stampede during the annual stoning of
Satan ritual.
(AP, 2/2/04)(WSJ, 2/3/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 2, Pres. Bush proposed a
$2.4 trillion federal budget with a projected deficit of $521 billion
for this year. It included an increase in rent for San Francisco's use
of Hetch Hetchy reservoir in the Yosemite Valley from $30,000 a year to
$8 million.
(SFC, 2/3/04, p.A1)(SFC, 2/4/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 2, A white power
containing Ricin, a deadly poison, was discovered in a mail room near
the office of US Senate majority leader Bill Frist.
(SFC, 2/3/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 2, An ivory-billed
woodpecker, thought to be extinct, was reported in the Cache River
National Wildlife Refuge of Arkansas. The last sighting of the bird was
in 1944. The sighting put a hold on the Grand Prairie Area
Demonstration Project, a $319 million irrigation project to provide
water for rice farming, which would divert water from the bird’s
habitat.
(SFC, 4/29/05, p.A1)(Econ, 5/13/06, p.36)
2004 Feb 2, Scientists reported
the discovery of elements 113 and 115.
(SFC, 2/3/04, p.A4)
2004 Feb 2, The US ambassador to
Ecuador said the US will withhold $15 million in military aid to
Ecuador for not signing an agreement granting US military members
immunity from an international court.
(AP, 2/2/04)
2004 Feb 2, PM Ariel Sharon told
his stunned Likud Party he plans to dismantle all Israeli settlements
in the Gaza Strip, his most specific comment yet on unilateral steps if
peace talks fail.
(AP, 2/2/04)
2004 Feb 2, Israel killed a leader
of Islamic Jihad and three other militants in a Gaza raid.
(AP, 2/2/05)
2004 Feb 2, In Nepal some 15,000
people marched in downtown Kathmandu demanding democratic reforms.
Police broke up the rally with tear gas, water cannons and bamboo
batons, injuring at least 12 people.
(AP, 2/2/04)
2004 Feb 2, Pakistan said
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of its nuclear program, has acknowledged
in a written statement that he sent sensitive technology to Iran, Libya
and North Korea to aid their atomic programs.
(AP, 2/2/04)
2004 Feb 2, A 6-year-old
Thai boy, who had been in contact with roosters used in cock fights,
died in Bangkok of bird flu. Thailand breeders began hiding their
valuable fighting roosters.
(WSJ, 2/10/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 2, In central Turkey an
11-story apartment building collapsed in Konya, killing at least 63
people. 12 people were found alive in the rubble the next day.
(AP, 2/3/04)(AP, 2/6/04)(AP,
2/7/04)
2004 Feb 2, In western Uganda a
boat overloaded with passengers and cargo capsized in stormy weather on
Lake Albert and more than 40 people were feared drowned.
(AP, 2/3/04)
2004 Feb 3, Kerry won five states
(Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico, N. Dakota) and the lion's
share of the delegates, taking command of the race. Of the 269
delegates up for grabs, Kerry won 144, Edwards 66, Clark 50, Dean seven
and Al Sharpton two. Clark squeaked a win in Oklahoma and Edwards
won his home state, S. Carolina.
(AP, 2/4/04)(USAT, 2/4/04, p.1A)
2004 Feb 3, US Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist said that a white powder, found in his office in the
Dirksen Senate Office Building, tested positive for ricin, forcing
closure of Senate office buildings and close scrutiny of congressional
mail.
(AP, 2/3/04)
2004 Feb 3, Gov. Rod Blagojevich
signed legislation creating a $500 million tax on Illinois hospitals,
which expected increased federal funding under the plan.
(USAT, 2/4/04, p.9A)
2004 Feb 3, The Ohio Legislature
approved a ban on same-sex marriage and barred benefits to both
homosexual and heterosexual domestic partners. Gov. Taft planned to
sign the bill.
(SFC, 2/4/04, p.A6)
2004 Feb 3, Oregon voters rejected
$800 million in tax increases setting up a new round of cuts in
services.
(WSJ, 2/4/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 3, The US government
revoked Guyana's Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj's travel visa. He
has been accused of organizing a hit squad blamed in the deaths of more
than 40 suspected criminals last year.
(AP, 2/5/04)(Econ, 5/22/04, p.34)
2004 Feb 3, In southern Russia a
car bomb exploded at the central market in Vladikavkaz, near the
war-ravaged Chechen Republic.
(AP, 2/3/04)
2004 Feb 3, Singapore Airlines
began 18½ hour non-stop flights to Los Angeles.
(USAT, 2/5/04, p.1B)
2004 Feb 4, The US Senate, rattled
by a ricin attack, began returning to regular business with no
illnesses reported.
(AP, 2/4/05)
2004 Feb 4, John Ashcroft joined
security chiefs from 32 nations at a Bali anti-terrorism conference.
(WSJ, 2/4/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 4, A Massachusetts
advisory opinion of the state Supreme Court said gay couples had the
right to marry.
(WSJ, 2/5/04, p.A4)
2004 Feb 4, Hilda Hilst (73), who
provoked Brazilian readers with fiction and poetry depicting insanity,
the supernatural and erotica, died.
(AP, 2/4/04)
2004 Feb 4, In Sierra Leone Pres.
Ahmed Tejah Kabbah and international sponsors declared a successful end
to disarmament, closing a final chapter in an 11-year war that was one
of the modern world's most vicious.
(AP, 2/4/04)
2004 Feb 5, CIA Director George
Tenet acknowledged that US spy agencies may have over-estimated Iraq's
illicit weapons capabilities.
(SFC, 2/6/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 5, A US federal judge
ruled that high school football players may skip college and go
straight to the pros.
(SFC, 2/6/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 5, NASA restored
communications with the Mars Spirit rover.
(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 5, In northeastern
Afghanistan rival armed factions clashed and a state television report
said 20 people were killed.
(AP, 2/7/04)
2004 Feb 5, A lantern festival
marking the end of China's Lunar New Year celebrations erupted into a
stampede, killing at least 37 people and injuring 15.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, At least 21 shellfish
hunters, all apparently Chinese nationals, died when they were trapped
by fast-rising tides in treacherous Morecambe Bay in northern England.
In 2006 Lin Liang Ren (29) was found guilty in the deaths of the
shellfish pickers at Warton Sands. Lin's girlfriend, Zhao Xiao Qing
(21) and cousin Lin Mu Yong (31) were also convicted of facilitating
the deaths. Liangren was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Xiaoqing was
sentenced to 2 years and 9 months. Muyong was sentenced to 4 years and
9 months.
(AP, 2/6/04)(AP, 3/24/06)(AFP, 3/28/06)
2004 Feb 5, In Haiti an armed
opposition group, led by Butteur Metayer, seized control of Gonaives,
Haiti's fourth-largest city, burning a police station, freeing
prisoners and leaving at least four people reported dead and 20 wounded
in clashes with police.
(AP, 2/5/04)(ST, 3/2/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 5, U.S. and Iraqi forces
captured more than 100 suspected guerrillas in raids across the
country, arresting one of Saddam Hussein's intelligence chiefs and
another Iraqi believed involved in a suicide bombing last month, a U.S.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, Indian soldiers shot
and killed 10 suspected Muslim militants in the forests of northern
Kashmir.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, Latvian Prime Minister
Einars Repse announced Thursday that his 14-month-old government was
stepping down, saying his Cabinet can't continue working without a
majority in parliament.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, Pakistan's Pres.
Musharraf pardoned Abdul Qadeer Khan after Kahn absolved Islamabad of
selling nuclear secrets to Iran.
(WSJ, 2/6/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 5, Seven Russian
servicemen were killed and at least 11 wounded over the last 24 hours
in the latest rebel attacks in the breakaway region of Chechnya.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, Ugandan rebels
attacked a refugee camp in northern Uganda early, killing 54 civilians
and two soldiers.
(AP, 2/6/04)
2004 Feb 5, Journalists at
Zimbabwe's only independent daily newspaper left their offices after
the Supreme Court upheld that it was a crime to work without a
government license.
(AP, 2/5/04)(WSJ, 2/5/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 6, Pres. Bush created a
bipartisan commission to investigate the quality of intelligence used
to justify the war in Iraq. Conclusions were set for March, 2005.
(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 6, It was reported that
John Barr, a Wall Street banker, was named president of the
Chicago-based Poetry Foundation. He replaced Joseph Parisi.
(WSJ, 2/6/04, p.A6)(SSFC, 6/27/04, p.M2)
2004 Feb 6, Delaware Agriculture
Secretary Michael Scuse said that the bird flu strain, identified as
H7, is different from the one that has swept Asia, and isn't a threat
to human health. The state has ordered the slaughter of some 12,000
chickens.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 6-2004 Feb 7, G7 finance
ministers met in Boca Raton, Florida, and agreed that more flexibility
is desirable for currencies that “lack such flexibility.”
(Econ, 2/14/04, p.70)
2004 Feb 6, Mechanic Joseph P.
Smith was charged with murder after authorities in Sarasota, Fla.,
found the body of 11-year-old girl Carlie Brucia. Her kidnapping had
been captured by a carwash surveillance camera.
(AP, 2/6/05)
2004 Feb 7, In Montana Dick Dasen,
prominent Kalispell philanthropist, was arrested in a prostitution
sting. In 2005 he was sentenced to 20 years in jail for building up a
personal vice-ring of local women and girls. All but 2 year of the
sentence was to be suspended pending treatment.
(Econ, 9/17/05,
p.33)(www.newwest.net/index.php/city/article/1262/C8/L8)
2004 Feb 6, Robbers handcuffed 15
workers at a cargo shed on the grounds of London's Heathrow Airport and
stole some $3.2 million in British pound notes.
(AP, 2/7/04)
2004 Feb 6, In Indonesia
earthquakes measuring 7.1 and aftershocks hit the remote Papua
province, flattening houses and leaving at least 34 people dead and
hundreds injured.
(AP, 2/6/04)(WSJ, 2/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 6, Chinese state-run
media reported regulators have given preliminary approval for a private
airline to be set up in the southwestern city of Chengdu.
(AP, 2/6/04)
2004 Feb 6, International donors
pledged $520 million to start the long process of turning Liberia from
a failed war-ravaged state into a democracy with a thriving economy.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 6, In Mexico deputy
ministers from 34 nations in the Americas failed to reach agreement on
a framework for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, stymied by
differences on the contentious issue of U.S. farm subsidies.
(AP, 2/6/04)
2004 Feb 6, Nigeria ordered an
investigation into allegations that a Halliburton Co. subsidiary paid
$180 million in bribes to land a natural gas project (1995-2002), while
US Vice President Dick Cheney was head of Halliburton.
(AP, 2/6/04)(WSJ, 2/5/04, p.A6)
2004 Feb 6, A bomb ripped through
a Moscow subway car during rush hour morning, killing 41 people and
wounding 134. Chechen rebels were blamed.
(AP, 2/6/04)(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A1)(AP, 2/12/04)
2004 Feb 7, John Kerry scored
decisive wins in Michigan and Washington state Democratic presidential
primaries.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 7, In Haiti police
reinforcements fought bloody battles with gunmen as they tried to
retake Gonaives from rebels who seized it. At least 7 police and 2
militants were killed.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 7, An Israeli helicopter
fired a missile into a car traveling in a crowded Gaza City street,
killing Aziz Mahmoud Shami, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad
group and a 12-year-old boy on his way to school. The attack wounded 10
Palestinians, three of them critically.
(AP, 2/7/04)
2004 Feb 7, In northern Kenya
tribal fighting between cattle rustlers and herdsmen killed at least 13
people, including three children.
(AP, 2/11/04)
2004 Feb 7, Nearly 400 members of
Yasser Arafat's ruling Fatah Party resigned to protest what they call
corruption and bad leadership within the group.
(AP, 2/7/04)
2004 Feb 7, Sri Lanka's president
dissolved parliament, paving the way for elections nearly three years
ahead of schedule.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, At the Grammy Awards,
rap funksters OutKast won album of the year for "Speakerboxxx-The Love
Below" and Beyonce took home a record-tying five trophies.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2004 Feb 8, President Bush denied
marching America into war under false pretenses and said in an
interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" the U.S.-led invasion was necessary
because Saddam Hussein could have developed a nuclear weapon.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2004 Feb 8, John Kerry won the
Maine caucuses.
(SFC, 2/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 8, In northeastern
Afghanistan 4 days of fighting between rival warlords over control of
the drug trade left 7 dead and 8 wounded.
(SFC, 2/9/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 8, In Brazil 49 inmates
slipped through a bathroom wall of a Rio de Janeiro jail cell in an
escape caught on a surveillance camera. Authorities suspended six
prison guards.
(AP, 2/9/04)
2004 Feb 8, US Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Croatia and thanked Pres. Stipe Mesic for
Croatia's small military police contingent (50) in Iraq.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, Socialist voters
across Greece cast symbolic ballots to hand the party's leadership to
Foreign Minister George Papandreou.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, In Suwayrah, Iraq, a
bomb inside a police station exploded soon after the morning roll call,
killing 3 police officer and injuring 11 others.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, A UN team met with
Iraqi leaders to discuss the feasibility of early legislative
elections, and its leader pledged to do "everything possible" to help
the country regain its sovereignty.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, In New Zealand some
3,400-gallons of fuel spilled in a fjord listed as a World Heritage
site. Officials the next day said the spill in Milford Sound fjord was
"eco-terrorism and economic sabotage" against the country's lucrative
tourism industry.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, Swiss voters approved
a measure to put into effect some of Europe's harshest laws on violent
criminals and pedophiles.
(SFC, 2/9/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 9, President Bush and
Democratic front-runner John Kerry sparred over the president's
economic leadership, while Kerry's rivals sought to slow his brisk pace.
(AP, 2/9/05)
2004 Feb 9, Tower Records Inc.
filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, after the music and
entertainment chain has so far proven unable to cope with competition
from large retailers, digital downloading and file copying.
(Reuters, 2/9/04)
2004 Feb 9, Robert P. Neuschel
(84), consultant and business professor, died. His book “The Servant
Leader” was published in 2005.
(WSJ, 1/20/06,
p.W6)(www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/news/hits/040212cst.htm)
2004 Feb 9, Rebel attacks and land
mines in Chechnya killed at least 9 Russian servicemen and local
pro-Moscow police over the last 24 hours.
(SFC, 2/10/04, p.A6)
2004 Feb 9, An Egyptian enraged at
the events in the Middle East stabbed 2 foreign tourists in Cairo’s
historic Ghawriya district.
(WSJ, 10/11/04, p.A17)
2004 Feb 9, In Haiti government
police retook 2 of nearly a dozen towns seized by rebels as the death
toll in the violent uprising rose to at least 40.
(SFC, 2/9/04, p.A5)(AP, 2/9/05)
2004 Feb 9, Culturecom Holdings
Ltd. of Hong Kong unveiled a DVD player and word-processing device
built with chips developed by Chinese computer scientist Chu Bong-foo.
Chu found a way to put Asia characters in position to command binary
code.
(WSJ, 2/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 9, Japan passed a law
making it easier to impose economic sanctions on impoverished North
Korea, prompting the communist country to demand that Tokyo be barred
from future multilateral talks on its nuclear program.
(AP, 2/9/04)
2004 Feb 9, In Malaysia
anti-corruption officers arrested the former head of scandal-plagued
steel company Perwaja.
(AP, 2/9/04)
2004 Feb 9, Saloum Cohen (82),
high priest of the tiny Samaritan community and a Palestinian lawmaker,
died. Cohen had been the spiritual head of the 660-strong Samaritans
since 2001.
(AP, 2/9/04)
2004 Feb 9, The UN adopted
Resolution 1559. It called for free elections in Lebanon and the
withdrawal of all foreign forces and the disbanding of all militias.
(www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/sc8181.doc.htm)
2004 Feb 9, Venezuela devalued its
currency by 17 percent against the U.S. dollar, a surprise decision
that could fuel inflation but help the government meet financing needs.
(AP, 2/9/04)
2004 Feb 10, The White House
released documents on Pres. Bush's time of service in the Air National
Guard. Questions remained over his service in Alabama in 1972.
(SFC, 2/11/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 10, Democratic
presidential front-runner John Kerry rolled to dominating wins in
Virginia and Tennessee, scoring a Southern sweep that knocked rival
Wesley Clark out of the race and put the nomination within reach.
(Reuters, 2/11/04)
2004 Feb 10, NYC said nearly 4% of
men age 40-49 in the city have AIDS or are infected with HIV.
(WSJ, 2/11/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 10, Edward Jablonski
(81), writer, died in NYC. Noted for his biographies of composers, his
over 2 dozen books also covered aviation and aerial warfare.
(SFC, 2/14/04, p.A22)
2004 Feb 10, OPEC met in Algiers
and agreed to reduce its official production by 1 million barrels-a-day
beginning Apr 1. Current production was 24.5 million.
(WSJ, 2/11/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 10, The US broke ground
for a new U.S. Embassy compound in the Chinese capital, billed by the
American government as the largest State Department project ever built
on foreign soil.
(AP, 2/10/04)
2004 Feb 10, French legislators
voted 494-36 to ban religious emblems such as Muslim head scarves from
state schools.
(WSJ, 2/11/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 10, French prosecutors
launched a money-laundering probe into the alleged transfers of $11.5
million dollars to accounts held by the wife of Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat.
(AP, 2/11/04)(WSJ, 2/11/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 10, In Haiti government
supporters in Cap-Haitien, the second largest city, built flaming
barricades to keep rebels out. UN aid officials warned of a looming
humanitarian crisis.
(AP, 2/10/04)
2004 Feb 10, An Iranian Fokker-50
plane carrying mostly foreign workers crashed as it approached Sharjah
airport in the United Arab Emirates, killing 43 people aboard. 3
survived.
(AP, 2/10/04)
2004 Feb 10, In Iskandariyah,
Iraq, a car bomb exploded at a police station south of Baghdad as
dozens of would-be recruits lined up to apply for jobs, and a hospital
official said at least 53 people were killed and 50 others wounded.
(AP, 2/10/04)(WSJ, 2/11/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 10, Italian Premier
Silvio Berlusconi met with Libya leader Moammar Gadhafi, and the United
States said it had restored diplomatic contacts with the country. In
London, Prime Minister Tony Blair held talks with the Libyan foreign
minister.
(AP, 2/10/04)
2004 Feb 10, In Nicaragua Carlos
Guadamuz, the former director of the state-run radio program, was shot
and killed, days after he said he received death threats. In 1969, he
had dressed up as a woman and tried to hijack a plane to Cuba. He was
then jailed for many years under former President Anastasio Somoza
Dabayle.
(AP, 2/10/04)
2004 Feb 11, Wesley Clark dropped
out of the race for the White House.
(AP, 2/11/05)
2004 Feb 11, It was reported that
Mattel planned to introduce a line of toys capable of receiving digital
signals from a new Batman TV cartoon show scheduled for the Fall.
(WSJ, 2/11/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 11, Cable TV giant
Comcast Corp. launched a hostile bid to buy The Walt Disney Co. for
more than $54 billion. Comcast later dropped its bid.
(WSJ, 2/12/04, p.A1)(AP, 2/11/05)
2004 Feb 11, In eastern
Afghanistan a suicide attacker fatally shot a senior intelligence
official in Khost, then blew himself up as guards tried to arrest him.
(AP, 2/11/04)(WSJ, 2/12/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 11, In Bolivia 2 inmates
were voluntarily nailed to crosses by their fellow prisoners as part of
a protest for better conditions and shorter sentences that was
broadcast on TV.
(AP, 2/11/04)
2004 Feb 11, A gas explosion in a
coal mine in southern China killed 24 miners.
(AP, 2/11/04)
2004 Feb 11, Jozef Lenart (80), a
former Czechoslovak prime minister cleared of treason charges for his
alleged role in the 1968 Soviet-led invasion that crushed the country's
democratic movement, died. He served as prime minister of
Czechoslovakia from 1963-1968 and headed the Slovak Communist Party
until 1988. A Slovak national he acquired Czech citizenship after
Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
(AP, 2/12/04)
2004 Feb 11, In Haiti pro-Aristide
supporters killed up to 50 residents of St. Marc.
(Econ, 5/14/05,
p.42)(www.haitipolicy.org/content/2969.htm)
2004 Feb 11, In Iraq a suicide
attacker blew up a car packed with explosives in a crowd of hundreds of
Iraqis waiting outside a Baghdad army recruiting center, killing 47
people in the second bombing in two days.
(AP, 2/11/05)
2004 Feb 11, Israeli troops rode
tanks into the Gaza Strip searching for Islamic militants firing
rockets at nearby Jewish settlements, and the ensuing battle left at
least 15 Palestinians dead and more than 50 wounded.
(AP, 2/11/04)(SFC, 2/12/04, p.A8)
2004 Feb 11, The bodies of 2
Americans, Francisco A. Antonielli (33) and James F. Bowtte (43), were
discovered in a parking garage at the airport in Tijuana, Mexico, the
apparent victims of a drug-related gunbattle.
(AP, 2/11/04)
2004 Feb 11, Philippine troops
rescued Alastair Joseph Onglingswan (35), a kidnapped American
businessman, who was chained by his neck and feet for 22 days by a lone
abductor.
(AP, 2/11/04)
2004 Feb 11, In Puerto Rico 4
people were killed in separate shootings over the last 24 hours,
pushing the number of deaths past the 100 mark for this year. There
were 780 killings in 2003, compared with 781 in 2002. Police say most
of the violence on the island of 4 million people is drug-related.
(AP, 2/11/04)
2004 Feb 11, South Korean
scientists reported that they had cloned human embryonic tissue cells.
(SFC, 2/12/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 11, Sri Lanka's president
fired 39 ministers and deputy ministers from the caretaker government
headed by her rival.
(AP, 2/11/04)
2004 Feb 11, Sudan
government-backed militias reportedly attacked five villages in
southern Darfur region, killing between 68 and 80 civilians. "Amnesty
International continued to receive details of horrifying attacks
against civilians in villages by government warplanes, soldiers and
government-aligned militia."
(AP, 2/18/04)
2004 Feb 12, Four men were charged
in a 42-count indictment alleging they'd run a steroid-distribution
ring that provided performance-enhancing drugs to dozens of athletes in
the NFL, the major leagues and track and field.
(AP, 2/12/05)
2004 Feb 12, Some 90 gay and
lesbian couples wed in San Francisco. Over the next few days some 2,000
took their vows.
(SFC, 2/13/04, p.A1)(WSJ, 2/17/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 12, Mattel released news
that Barbie would have a new boyfriend named Blaine, an Australian
boogie boarder. Barbie’s new “Cali Girl” lined was set to debut in the
summer.
(ST, 7/29/04, p.C8)
2004 Feb 12, A union representing
almost 50,000 university teachers in Britain voted to strike over pay.
(AP, 2/12/04)
2004 Feb 12, Wang Huaizhong (57),
a former Chinese provincial vice governor, was executed in Shandong
province for taking more than $600,000 in bribes.
(AP, 2/12/04)
2004 Feb 12, In Congo a Kenyan
army officer, investigating reports of fighting between the rival Hema
and Lendu tribal militias, was shot to death when his U.N. military
convoy came under fire in Ituri province.
(AP, 2/14/04)
2004 Feb 12, Malaysia's land
minister was arrested and charged for his involvement a deal to sell
millions of dollars worth of shares his government agency owned in the
second high-profile anti-corruption case this week amid a government
crackdown.
(AP, 2/12/04)
2004 Feb 13, President Bush,
trying to calm a political storm, ordered the release of his
Vietnam-era military records to counter Democrats' suggestions that
he'd shirked his duty in the Texas Air National Guard.
(AP, 2/13/05)
2004 Feb 13, The FCC began writing
rules to enable users to access the Internet through electric power
lines.
(SFC, 2/13/04, p.B1)
2004 Feb 13, San Francisco issued
665 same-sex marriage licenses as hundreds more gay couples rushed to
tie the knot before the opportunity slipped away.
(AP, 2/13/04)
2004 Feb 13, In Qatar Zelimkhan
Yandarbiyev (51), Chechnya's exiled former president, was assassinated
when a bomb blew apart his car as he left a mosque with his teenage son
(13). He was wanted by Russia for terrorism and ties to al-Qaida.
(AP, 2/13/04)
2004 Feb 13, Greek and Turkish
Cypriot leaders agreed to resume full negotiations next week to end the
30-year division of Cyprus before it joins the European Union on May 1.
(AP, 2/13/04)
2004 Feb 13, In Jamaica hundreds
of people rioted in Kingston, attacking a police station and setting
cars ablaze after a policeman allegedly shot and wounded a high-school
student.
(AP, 2/13/04)
2004 Feb 13, A Cambodian-flagged
vessel that sank near the entrance of the Bosporus. A snowstorm
sweeping out of the Balkans disrupted travel across Turkey and Greece,
forcing rescuers to call off the search for the 20 crew members of the
cargo ship.
(AP, 2/13/04)
2004 Feb 13, It was reported that
police in Mauritania had arrested of five suspected members of
Afghanistan's Taliban movement.
(AP, 2/13/04)
2004 Feb 14, It was reported that
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had donated $82.9 million to the
Areas Global TB Vaccine Foundation for the development of a
tuberculosis vaccine.
(SFC, 2/13/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 14, Al-Hurra (the Free
One), a US backed Arabic-language satellite TV service, began
broadcasting from Fairfax, Virginia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhurra)(Econ,
10/29/05, p.57)
2004 Feb 14, China executed Yang
Xinhua (38), a man convicted of murdering 67 people, in what media said
might be the country's longest killing spree in modern history. Yang
was convicted of 67 killings and 23 rapes in Henan and three other
provinces. His crime spree began in 2001 following release from a labor
camp and ended with his capture in November.
(AP, 2/14/04)
2004 Feb 14, In France thousands
of people marched to protest a law banning the Islamic coverings and
other religious apparel in public schools.
(AP, 2/14/04)
2004 Feb 14, In Iraq guerrillas
launched a bold daylight assault on an Iraqi police station and
security compound west of Baghdad, freeing prisoners and sparking a
gunbattle that killed 23 people and wounded 33.
(SSFC, 2/15/04, p.A1)(AP, 2/14/05)
2004 Feb 14, In Moscow, Russia, an
indoor water park roof collapsed, killing 28 people and injuring more
than 100.
(AP, 2/15/04)(AP, 2/14/05)
2004 Feb 14, In northern Pakistan
two strong earthquakes triggered landslides and toppled walls that
killed at least 24 people and injured about 30 others.
(AP, 2/15/04)(AP, 2/16/04)
2004 Feb 14, In Uganda a tanker
truck carrying diesel fuel collided with a packed minibus and burst
into flames, killing at least 32 people.
(AP, 2/15/04)
2004 Feb 15, Dale Earnhardt Jr.
won the Daytona 500 on the same track where his father was killed three
years earlier.
(AP, 2/15/05)
2004 Feb 15, John Kerry won the DC
and Nevada presidential caucuses.
(SSFC, 2/15/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 15, Actress Jan Miner
(86), best known as "Madge the manicurist" in Palmolive TV ads, died in
Bethel, Conn.
(AP, 2/15/05)
2004 Feb 15, In Brazil gunmen
ambushed a busload of police in Rio and killed 3 officers.
(WSJ, 2/17/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 15, In northeastern China
a fire swept through a shopping center, killing 51 people and injuring
dozens more. Hours later, a fire in a temple in the country's southeast
killed 39 people. The 2 blazes killed at least 93 people.
(AP, 2/15/04)(AP, 2/15/05)
2004 Feb 15, In India a boat
carrying villagers returning from a picnic capsized in the Ganges
River. 17 people were missing and believed drowned.
(AP, 2/15/04)
2004 Feb 15, Iraqi police arrested
No. 41 on the American military's most-wanted list, Baath Party
official Mohammed Zimam Abdul-Razaq.
(AP, 2/15/04)
2004 Feb 15, In Peru the
government of embattled President Alejandro Toledo appointed a new
lineup of Cabinet ministers as he tries to survive a deepening
political crisis. It was Toledo's fifth shake-up in 30 months.
(AP, 2/16/04)
2004 Feb 16, A confident John
Kerry launched a full-throttle attack on President Bush's economic
policies, mostly ignoring his Democratic rivals on the eve of the
Wisconsin primary.
(AP, 2/16/05)
2004 Feb 16, In Ohio a crane
collapsed at an I-80 bridge near Toledo and 3 workers were killed.
(WSJ, 2/17/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 16, In Australia rioters
set fire to a train station and pelted police with gasoline bombs in an
Aboriginal ghetto in Sydney during a nine-hour street battle that began
after a teenager died, allegedly while being chased by officer.
(AP, 2/16/04)
2004 Feb 16, In Belarus President
Alexander Lukashenko ordered the Justice Ministry to strengthen control
over political parties, community organizations and unions.
(AP, 2/16/04)
2004 Feb 16, Ex-soldiers took
Haiti's rebellion to the key central city of Hinche, torching the
police station and freeing prisoners.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Feb 16, India and Pakistan
began historic meetings aimed at preparing for a sustained peace
dialogue on Kashmir and other disputes.
(AP, 2/16/04)
2004 Feb 16, An earthquake shook
Indonesia's Sumatra island, killing five people and damaging 60 homes.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Feb 16, In Iraq 3 U.S.
soldiers were killed in roadside bomb blasts. A bomb exploded in a
schoolyard in a Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad, killing at least
one child and wounding three other people,
(AP, 2/16/04)(SFC, 2/17/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 16, Thailand officials
said bird flu has been detected in a previously unaffected Thai
province and has resurfaced in eight other provinces that were under
observation.
(AP, 2/16/04)
2004 Feb 17, In Wisconsin John
Kerry won the primary with about 40 percent of the vote while Edwards
finished a close second with 34 percent. Dean, who had banked his
future on a strong showing, drew just 18 percent.
(AP, 2/18/04)(SFC, 2/18/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 17, Cingular Wireless won
the bidding war to acquire AT&T Wireless Services for nearly $41
billion in cash, a deal that would create the largest cell phone
company in the US.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Feb 17, In Connecticut 2
cranes collapsed at a bridge construction site and one worker was
killed.
(WSJ, 2/18/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 17, In Ecuador riot
police firing tear gas clashed with hundreds of Indian protesters,
leaving at least 17 people injured in the second day of demonstrations
demanding more roads and better education for isolated Andean
communities. Separately prison inmates held 360 visitors hostage to
protest overcrowding, long sentences and poor conditions including a
lack of running water.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Feb 17, Finnish technology
group Setec said it won the first order for passports with new
biometric technology required by international aviation authorities and
the U.S. government.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Feb 17, The Gambian president
announced the discovery of "large quantities" of oil in his tiny West
African nation, saying the offshore find would eliminate poverty and
hunger.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Feb 17, In Haiti pres.
Aristide said the nation is in the throes of a coup attempt and
appealed for international help.
(WSJ, 2/18/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 17, India and Pakistan
reached a broad agreement on the timetable for sustained peace talks on
disputed Kashmir and other tough issues separating the South Asian
neighbors.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Feb 17, In Iraq roadside
bombs killed 2 U.S. soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad and Sunni
Muslim areas to the north of the capital.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Feb 17, A new study reported
that 2 cows in Italy had been found with a new form of mad cow disease,
bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy (BASE).
(SFC, 2/17/04, p.A7)
2004 Feb 17, Jose Lopez Portillo
(83), former Mexican president (1976-1982) who governed through an
oil-driven boom to a debt-induced bust, died of complications from
pneumonia.
(AP, 2/18/04)
2004 Feb 17, The Dutch parliament
approved a measure to expel 26,000 people seeking political asylum,
despite objections from left-leaning political parties and human rights
groups.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Feb 17, UN agencies began
urgently airlifting relief supplies into eastern Chad and western Sudan
to help more than 600,000 Sudanese lacking food, water and medical
supplies because of fighting.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Feb 18, The US federal debt
passed the $7 trillion mark.
(WSJ, 2/19/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 18, President Bush
praised social progress in Tunisia and welcomed its leader, Zine El
Abidine Ben Ali, as a partner in the fight against terrorism while also
urging political reforms in the moderate Muslim nation in North African
nation.
(AP, 2/18/04)
2004 Feb 18, The race for the
Democratic nomination narrowed to a two-man contest between
front-runner John Kerry and plucky rival John Edwards after Howard Dean
ended his bid before the campaign spread to the 10 crucial "Super
Tuesday" states.
(AP, 2/18/04)
2004 Feb 18, Scientists reported
that X-rays from galaxy RX J1242-11 indicated a black hole tearing
apart a star and gobbling up a share of its gaseous mass.
(SFC, 2/19/04, p.A9)
2004 Feb 18, In Neyshabur,
northeastern Iran, a 51-car train, carrying fuel, fertilizer and
industrial chemicals, derailed and exploded. It rolled out of a
switchyard and eventually reach a speed of more than 90 mph before it
derailed, caught fire and exploded. The explosions destroyed five
villages killing at least 200 people and injuring hundreds more.
(AP, 2/19/04)(AP, 4/23/04)
2004 Feb 18, In Iraq 2 trucks
packed with explosives blew up outside Hilla, Polish-run base south of
Baghdad, after coalition forces opened fire on the suicide bombers
racing toward them. 11 Iraqi civilians were killed and at least 64
people were wounded.
(AP, 2/18/04)(SFC, 2/19/04, p.A14)
2004 Feb 18, Ireland's government
announced plans to ban smoking in all enclosed workplaces as of March
29.
(SFC, 2/19/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 18, The armed Basque
separatist group ETA unilaterally declared a cease-fire for the
northeastern region of Catalonia, but the move was immediately
criticized by Spain's prime minister and politicians who refuse to
negotiate with the militant group.
(AP, 2/18/04)
2004 Feb 18, The UN said it would
redeploy 4,000 of its forces to Congo's volatile northeast, where
peacekeepers have come under fire from rival ethnic militias fighting
for control of mineral riches.
(AP, 2/18/04)
2004 Feb 18, In northern Uganda
government soldiers backed by helicopter gunships attacked a group of
rebels in a remote village, killing 36 insurgents.
(AP, 2/19/04)
2004 Feb 19, The AFL-CIO endorsed
Democrat John Kerry for president.
(AP, 2/19/05)
2004 Feb 19, After sanctioning
more than 2,800 gay marriages, the city of San Francisco sued the state
of California, challenging its ban on same-sex marriages.
(AP, 2/19/05)
2004 Feb 19, Jeffrey Skilling,
former CEO of Enron, pleaded not guilty to 35 felony charges and was
released after posting a $5 million bail.
(SFC, 2/20/04, p.B1)
2004 Feb 19, It was announced that
Philip Anschutz (64), Denver billionaire and founder of Qwest
Communications, purchased the Fang newspapers including the SF Examiner
for $20 million.
(SFC, 2/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 19, In Canada bird flu
was detected at a chicken producer in the Fraser Valley near Vancouver.
By the end of April some 19 million birds were culled, But the disease
continued to spread.
(ST, 4/30/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 19, In Iraq an explosion
ripped through an infantry patrol in an insurgent center west of
Baghdad, killing two U.S. soldiers and injuring another.
(AP, 2/19/04)
2004 Feb 19, In Kenya a fire raced
through a Nairobi slum, destroying hundreds of ramshackle tin and
timber houses and leaving 4,500 families homeless.
(AP, 2/20/04)
2004 Feb 19, A Japanese consortium
announced it will develop an Iranian oil field with reserves of up to
26 billion barrels. The deal was opposed by the United States because
of fears the money could go to nuclear proliferation.
(AP, 2/19/04)
2004 Feb 20, Pres. Bush bypassed
the Senate and seated William H. Pryor Jr., Alabama attorney and
abortion opponent, as an appeals court judge through 2005.
(SFC, 2/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 20, Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger directed the California state attorney general to take
immediate legal steps to stop SF from granting marriage licenses to gay
couples.
(AP, 2/21/04)(SFC, 2/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 20, In Virginia 1 person
won at least $230 million in the Mega Millions lottery, becoming the
biggest winner in the game's history.
(AP, 2/21/04)
2004 Feb 20, In Texas a strain of
avian flu was reported in Gonzales County. Further checks revealed that
it was highly pathogenic, but posed little risk to humans.
(SFC, 2/24/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 20, The US and a
host of other countries urged Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
and opposition leaders to form a broad-based government as a move
toward ending weeks of bloody conflict. Haiti's poorly trained and
equipped police put up little resistance as rebels moved against the
government.
(AP, 2/20/04)
2004 Feb 20, In Iran Islamic
hard-liners and reformers dueled during parliamentary elections.
(AP, 2/20/04)
2004 Feb 20, Lithuania expelled
three Russian diplomats for trying to gather information related to the
impeachment of Lithuanian President Rolandas Paksas "in an improper and
illegal way."
(AP, 2/27/04)
2004 Feb 21, The Mississippi was
closed near New Orleans following a ship collision that left 5 crewmen
lost.
(WSJ, 2/23/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 21, In Albania some 6-20
thousand people marched in Tirana in opposition to PM Fatos Nano and
his Socialist-led government.
(SSFC, 2/22/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 21, Colombian troops
clashed with leftist rebels and outlawed paramilitaries in separate
offensives, killing 38 fighters. Ten soldiers were also killed.
(AP, 2/23/04)
2004 Feb 21, in northern Honduras
the disfigured body of a young man was found along with a message
threatening the Honduran president. The discovery marks the 10th such
slaying apparently carried about by gangs protesting a government
crackdown.
(AP, 2/23/04)
2004 Feb 21, Iran's hard-line
Islamic rulers claimed that voters dealt reformers a decisive blow with
a strong turnout in disputed parliament elections, but partial returns
suggested the pro-reform boycott had an impact.
(AP, 2/21/04)
2004 Feb 21, The International Red
Cross visited former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who was in U.S.
custody.
(AP, 2/21/05)
2004 Feb 21, In northern Uganda
LRA rebels attacked a refugee camp, torching homes and gunning people
down as they fled. At least 192 people were killed, some perishing in
the flames of their own homes.
(AP, 2/22/04)(WSJ, 6/28/04, p.A10)
2004 Feb 22, The final TV episode
of "Sex and the City" aired after a 6-season run.
(SFC, 2/23/04, p.A2)
2004 Feb 22, Ralph Nader announced
that he would run for the US presidency.
(SFC, 2/23/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 22, In San Jose, Ca.,
Ranbir Singh (43) opened fire on a group of Sikh men playing cards and
killed 3. Singh was killed after the group turned on him.
(SFC, 2/23/04, p.A1)(SFC, 2/24/04, p.A15)
2004 Feb 22, US and British
special forces reportedly had cornered Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden
in a mountainous area in northwest Pakistan, near the Afghanistan
border.
(AP, 2/22/04)
2004 Feb 22, In Angola a tanker
truck carrying gasoline exploded near the capital of Luanda, killing 18
people and injuring 87.
(AP, 2/23/04)
2004 Feb 22, At least 66 people
died in weekend clashes among Colombian troops, leftist rebels and
right-wing paramilitary forces.
(AP, 2/23/04)
2004 Feb 22, In southeast Congo a
militia led by a commander named "Cut-Throat" massacred more than 100
civilians and soldiers.
(AP, 2/24/04)
2004 Feb 22, Giorgio Armani signed
a $1 billion hotel venture with Dubai’s Emaar Properties.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.61)
2004 Feb 22, In Haiti rebels
attacked the government's last major stronghold in the north,
Cap-Haitien, and witnesses reported hearing gunfire on the outskirts of
the city.
(AP, 2/22/04)
2004 Feb 22, In Iran hard-line
Islamic candidates appeared likely to take control in the liberal
stronghold of Tehran and held a wide lead nationwide after
parliamentary elections from which hundreds of liberal candidates were
barred.
(AP, 2/22/04)
2004 Feb 22, Gunmen attacked
Iraqi police in two northern Iraqi cities, sparking clashes that killed
two attackers. Meanwhile, jailed former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
wrote a letter to his family for the international Red Cross to deliver.
(AP, 2/22/04)
2004 Feb 22, In Israel a suicide
bomber blew himself up on a crowded Jerusalem bus, killing eight people
and wounding 59.
(AP, 2/22/04)
2004 Feb 22, Japanese authorities
confirmed the nation's 10th case of mad cow disease since the first
sick animal was discovered in September 2001.
(AP, 2/22/04)
2004 Feb 22, In Nepal a land mine
exploded beneath a bus carrying Nepalese soldiers, killing three people
and injuring 15 others.
(AP, 2/22/04)
2004 Feb 22, An Islamic state in
Nigeria that is at the heart of a spreading Africa polio outbreak
declared it would not relent on its boycott of a mass vaccination
program which it called a U.S. plot to spread AIDS and infertility
among Muslims.
(AP, 2/22/04)
2004 Feb 23, Pentagon officials
opened a criminal fraud investigation of Halliburton on fuel
overpricing in Iraq.
(SFC, 2/24/04, p.A8)
2004 Feb 23, The US Army cancelled
a $39 billion Comanche helicopter program after spending $6.9 billion.
Boeing and Sikorsky were the main contractors.
(SFC, 2/24/04, p.A5)
2004 Feb 23, US Education
Secretary Rod Paige likened the National Education Association, the
nation's largest teachers union, to a "terrorist organization" during a
private White House meeting with governors. Paige later called it a
poor choice of words, but stood by his claim the NEA was using
"obstructionist scare tactics" in its fight over the nation's education
law.
(AP, 2/23/05)
2004 Feb 23, James Joseph Minder
(74) resigned as chairman of Smith & Wessen Holding Corp. following
revelations that he had served years in prison for armed robbery in
Michigan, where he was once known as the "Shotgun Bandit."
(WSJ, 3/8/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 23, British law changed
to allow immigrants to work but not claim most welfare benefits.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.52)
2004 Feb 23, Envoys from 6 nations
gathered in Beijing for talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis.
(WSJ, 2/24/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 23, In northeastern China
a coal mine explosion killed at least 24 miners as rescue workers
scrambled to find 13 more trapped miners.
(AP, 2/24/04)
2004 Feb 23, Rebels who overran
Haiti's second-largest city began detaining people identified as
supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and said they soon will
attack Haiti's capital. Fifty combat-ready U.S. Marines were on their
way to Port-au-Prince to secure the U.S. Embassy and its staff.
(AP, 2/23/04)
2004 Feb 23, In India an explosion
and fire at India's main space center killed at least six people. The
accident took place at the solid propellant fuel plant at the
government's Dhawan Space Center, on Sriharikota Island just off
India's southeastern coast.
(AP, 2/23/04)
2004 Feb 23, In Iran conservatives
formally reclaimed control of parliament after disputed elections that
were boycotted by reformists who called the vote a "historical fiasco"
without free choice.
(AP, 2/23/04)
2004 Feb 23, In Iraq a suicide
bomber detonated an explosive-packed vehicle outside an Iraqi police
station in a Kurdish neighborhood of Kirkuk, killing at least seven
people and wounding at least 35 others.
(AP, 2/23/04)
2004 Feb 23, The World Health
Organization launched a massive immunization campaign targeting 63
million children in 10 African countries as a polio outbreak spread
from heavily Muslim northern Nigeria.
(AP, 2/21/04)
2004 Feb 24, Pres. Bush called for
a constitutional amendment to ban marriage between members of the same
sex.
(SFC, 2/25/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 24, Democrat John Kerry
defeated John Edwards by large margins in Utah and Florida, and also
won in Hawaii, where Edwards ran third behind Dennis Kucinich.
(AP, 2/24/05)
2004 Feb 24, Alan Greenspan warned
of too much concentration of financial risk in the books of mortgage
giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
(WSJ, 2/25/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 24, The 1st charges were
filed against 2 detainees in Guantanamo. Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, a
Danish citizen, was released from Guantanamo after being held for 747
days. In 2007 he was arrested in Denmark on suspicion of withdrawing
$18,900 from other people's accounts using stolen debit cards and PIN
codes.
(WSJ, 2/25/04, p.A1)(AP, 8/17/07)
2004 Feb 24, John Randolph (88),
character actor, died in Hollywood.
(AP, 2/24/05)
2004 Feb 24, An earthquake shook
Burundi, killing three people and destroying at least two dozen homes.
(AP, 2/24/04)
2004 Feb 24, A 5.1 earthquake
struck northern Morocco near Al Hoceima, toppling houses and killing
629 people.
(AP, 2/25/04)(SFC, 2/25/04, p.A3)(AP, 3/5/04)
2004 Feb 24, In central Nigeria
suspected Muslim militants armed with guns and bows and arrows killed
at least 48 people in an attack on a farming village. Most of the
victims died as they sought refuge in a church.
(AP, 2/25/04)
2004 Feb 24, In Russia Pres.
Vladimir Putin dismissed PM Mikhail Kasyanov and all other Cabinet
ministers, in preparation for next month's presidential vote. Putin
named Viktor Khristenko, a former finance official, as acting prime
minister.
(AP, 2/24/04)(WSJ, 2/25/04, p.A1)(Econ, 7/16/05,
p.48)
2004 Feb 24, In Sardinia a small
plane carrying a medical team and a heart for a transplant patient
crashed, killing all six people aboard.
(AP, 2/24/04)
2004 Feb 24, In Switzerland Vitaly
Kaloyev of Russia killed Pieter Nielsen, a Danish air traffic
controller with the Swiss company Skyguide. Nielsen had been on duty
during the July 1, 2002, collision between a Bashkirian Airlines plane
and a DHL cargo jet. Kolayev’s family was killed in the crash. In 2007
Switzerland's highest court ordered Kolayev’s release because he had
served more than two-thirds of his sentence with good behavior.
(AP, 11/8/07)
2004 Feb 24, An Uzbek court
ordered the release of Fatima Mukadirova (62), a woman convicted of
anti-constitutional activity after publicizing her son's death in
prison from torture.
(AP, 2/24/04)
2004 Feb 25, The Mel Gibson film
"Passion of Christ" premiered on Ash Wednesday.
(SFC, 2/26/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 25, Alan Greenspan
proposed that the US government scale back Social Security and Medicare
benefits to avoid future deficit problems.
(SFC, 2/26/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 25, The US Supreme Court
ruled that states may withhold scholarships from students preparing for
the ministry.
(SFC, 2/26/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 25, A US State Dept.
report criticized Russia's human rights record in Chechnya citing
reports of government involvement in "politically motivated
disappearances."
(SSFC, 2/29/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 25, The annual TED
conference, founded in 1984, began in Monterey, Ca. The Sapling
Foundation (b.1996) bought the conference in 2001. TED sprung from an
observation by Richard Saul Wurman of a powerful convergence between
technology, entertainment and design.
(SSFC, 2/07/04, p.E5)
2004 Feb 25, It was reported that
a biologist had confirmed the sighting of a real Michigan wolverine,
about 200 years after the species was last seen in the state that uses
the small but ferocious animal as its unofficial nickname.
(AP, 2/25/04)
2004 Feb 25, In Afghanistan gunmen
opened fire on a vehicle carrying Afghan aid workers east of the
capital, killing five and wounding two others.
(AP, 2/26/04)
2004 Feb 25, Two American soldiers
were killed when their Kiowa helicopter crashed in a river west of
Baghdad. Witnesses indicated that it was shot down. Gunmen assassinated
the deputy police chief in Mosul.
(AP, 2/25/04)(WSJ, 2/26/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 25, Israeli security
forces raided four branches of Palestinian banks, seizing $6.7 million
they said was sent by Iran, Syria and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas to
fund Palestinian militants.
(AP, 2/25/04)(WSJ, 2/26/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 25, In Peru meat and
produce markets in Lima received smaller shipments during the second
day of a strike by cargo truck and passenger bus companies.
(AP, 2/25/04)
2004 Feb 25, The head of Doe Run
Peru, a US-owned smelter in Oroyo, Peru, admitted that lead poisoning
of children by the facility's emissions was a serious problem, but said
his company would not be able to significantly reduce the contamination
until 2011.
(AP, 2/25/04)(www.doerun.com/)
2004 Feb 25, In northern Uganda
massive street protests after a massacre by rebels turned violent, with
mobs beating rival tribesmen and burning houses and police shooting
into the crowd. At least nine people were killed.
(AP, 2/25/04)
2004 Feb 26, President Bush
tightened U.S. travel restrictions against Cuba.
(AP, 2/27/04)
2004 Feb 26, Rosie O'Donnell, TV
comedian, married Kelli Carpenter in San Francisco.
(SFC, 2/27/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 26, The US lifted a
long-standing ban on travel to Libya after Moammar Gadhafi's government
affirmed that it was responsible for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103
in 1988.
(AP, 2/26/04)
2004 Feb 26, Two church-sanctioned
studies documenting sex abuse by U.S. Roman Catholic clergy said that
about 4 percent of clerics had been accused of molesting minors since
1950 and blamed bishops' "moral laxity" in disciplining offenders for
letting the problem worsen.
(AP, 2/26/05)
2004 Feb 26, It was reported that
scientists had identified a protein, TRIM5-alpha, that shields rhesus
monkeys from the AIDS virus.
(WSJ, 2/26/04, p.D4)
2004 Feb 26, A mail bombing
injured Don Logan, the diversity director in Scottsdale, Arizona. In
2009 Illinois twins Dennis and Daniel Mahon (58) were indicted for the
bombing. They had allegedly intended to promote racial discord on
behalf of the White Aryan Resistance.
(SFC, 6/26/09,
p.A5)(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529121,00.html)
2004 Feb 26, It was reported that
dentists were departing Britain's publicly funded National Health
Service in large numbers, leaving a growing number of Britons without
access to affordable care.
(AP, 2/26/04)
2004 Feb 26, In Canada about 400
police officers cracked down on the Hells Angels and their affiliates
in the Montreal area, targeting more than 60 people authorities believe
were involved in gangsterism and drug-trafficking.
(AP, 2/26/04)
2004 Feb 26, Mikhail Saakashvili,
the new president of Georgia, said he is ready to negotiate full
autonomy for the separatist Abkhazia region to end the decade-long
conflict.
(AP, 2/26/04)
2004 Feb 26, Israeli soldiers shot
and killed two Palestinians during violent protests against Israel's
West Bank barrier. Two Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli soldier at
a Gaza Strip crossing before being gunned down by troops.
(AP, 2/26/04)
2004 Feb 26, Macedonian President
Boris Trajkovski, a moderate leader who helped unite his ethnically
divided country, was killed when his plane crashed in bad weather in
mountainous southern Bosnia.
(AP, 2/26/04)
2004 Feb 26, President Vladimir
Putin opened a stretch of highway in Russia's Far East that will make
it possible for the first time to drive by road to Asia. The 6,214-mile
Moscow to Vladivostok trek will open a window to the East and the
ever-expanding Chinese market.
(AP, 2/27/04)
2004 Feb 26, Russian Foreign
Minister Igor Ivanov said that three Russian intelligence agents had
been arrested in Qatar on suspicion of involvement in the killing of
former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. Ivanov said they were
innocent and demanded their release.
(AP, 2/26/04)
2004 Feb 26, In Siberia at least
15 people were killed and 17 more injured in a cafe explosion, which
apparently was caused by a natural gas leak.
(AP, 2/26/04)
2004 Feb 27, A federal judge in NY
threw out 1 of 5 counts against Martha Stewart (62). She said
prosecutors failed to prove that Stewart intended to commit securities
fraud in her Dec 21, 2001, sale of ImClone Systems shares. 4 lesser
charges remained.
(SFC, 2/28/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 27, America's top bishop,
Wilton Gregory, declared the days of sheltering sex abusers in the
Roman Catholic priesthood were "history" as two reports showed how
pervasive assaults on minors had been during the previous half-century.
(AP, 2/27/05)
2004 Feb 27, Bill Lockyer,
California state Attorney General, asked the California Supreme Court
to stop SF officials from issuing same-sex marriage licenses and
invalidate the 3,400 gay and lesbian weddings that have taken place at
City Hall since Feb 12. The justices halted the weddings the following
month.
(SFC, 8/13/04, p.A16)(AP, 2/27/05)
2004 Feb 27, In Bolivia a
prosecutor who handled drug cases was killed by a bomb that demolished
her car as she started the engine.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 27, In Egypt Izzat
Mohammed Hamid, a clan leader in a southern town, threatened to kill
scores of hostages if police should attempt a rescue. The band seized
the hostages during a shootout with authorities who had been trying to
arrest fugitives wanted for drug trafficking and other crimes.
(AP, 2/27/04)
2004 Feb 27, French Foreign
Minister Dominique de Villepin held talks with leaders of Haiti's
government on how to end a three-week rebellion.
(AP, 2/27/04)
2004 Feb 27, In eastern India a
high speed passenger train crashed into a crowded bus, killing at least
9 people and injuring 41 others.
(AP, 2/27/04)
2004 Feb 27, Israeli police
stormed one of Jerusalem's holiest sites to disperse hundreds of
Palestinian stone-throwers protesting Israel's contentious West Bank
barrier.
(AP, 2/27/04)
2004 Feb 27, Shoko Asahara was
convicted and sentenced to hang for masterminding the deadly 1995 nerve
gas attack on the Tokyo subway and other crimes that killed 27 people.
(AP, 2/27/04)
2004 Feb 27, In the Philippines a
ferry explosion and fire killed at least two people, though 180 more
were missing. The Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf claimed
responsibility. In 2008 Ruben Pestano Lavilla Jr. was arrested in
Bahrain and deported back to the Philippines for his role in the
bombing of the ferry which killed 116 people.
(AP, 2/29/04)(SFC, 9/1/08, p.A3)
2004 Feb 27, Sudanese government
forces launched a series of raids on western villages, killing at least
70 civilians and forcing tens of thousands to flee.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 27, In Venezuela clashes
between police and thousands of protesters pressing for the recall of
President Hugo Chavez overshadowed a summit of developing nations, with
at least two people killed and dozens injured. Chavez opened a two-day
summit with the leaders of 18 other developing nations in Caracas,
urging them to reject free-market policies imposed by industrialized
nations.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, The Bow Mariner, a
tanker carrying 3.5 million gallons of ethanol, exploded and sank off
Virginia's Eastern Shore. Three crewmen were known dead and six others
were rescued. 18 crew members were left missing.
(SSFC, 2/29/04, p.A3)(SFC, 2/02/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 28, It was reported that
80% of Americans claim to believe in God, compared with 62% of the
French and 52% of Swedes.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.34)
2004 Feb 28, It was reported that
scientists had measured the shortest time interval ever, a mere 100
attoseconds. The “atto” referred to a billionth of a “nano.”
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.77)
2004 Feb 28, Daniel Joseph
Boorstin (89), author, historian and 12th librarian of Congress, died
in Washington DC. His 2 dozen books included The Americans trilogy:
"The Colonial Experience" (1959), "The National Experience" (1966), and
"The Democratic Experience" (1973).
(SSFC, 2/29/04, p.A2)(Econ, 3/20/04, p.94)
2004 Feb 28, African leaders
agreed on a common security policy that for the first time gives the
fledgling African Union authority to intervene in border wars and
internal conflicts. A draft declaration of the policy was expected to
be announced at the conclusion of the two-day pan-African summit.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, Egyptian security
forces attacked gunmen who had taken an estimated 80 people hostage in
a southern Egyptian town. Some of the captives were feared dead.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, In Finland hundreds
of trucks prepared to roll onto frozen roads at midnight, stocked with
beer and hard cider for a population that eagerly awaits a historic
government measure that will cut alcohol prices by nearly 40 percent.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, In Haiti anarchy
spread across the capital as residents looted warehouses, government
loyalists attacked passers-by and rebels advanced closer to the seat of
power.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, Iraq's U.S.-picked
leaders failed to meet a deadline for adopting an interim constitution.
(AP, 2/28/05)
2004 Feb 28, Six-nation talks on
North Korea's nuclear program ended without any major breakthrough. The
North denounced the United States, saying it wasn't willing to reach a
settlement.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, In Pakistan a suicide
attacker blew himself up in a Shiite Muslim mosque in a city near
Islamabad.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, The mayor of Nablus,
the West Bank's largest city, said he is quitting to protest Yasser
Arafat's failure to rein in armed gangs.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, Qatar accused Russia
of detaining two of its nationals in Moscow, after two Russians were
charged with murdering a former rebel Chechen leader in Qatar.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, It was reported that
70% South Koreans had high-speed Internet connections.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.61)
2004 Feb 28, In Taiwan an
estimated 1.2 million people linked hands in a human chain the length
of the island as President Chen Shui-bian urged protesters to oppose
China's military threats and create the "Great Wall of Taiwan's
democracy."
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 29, In the Academy Awards
"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" won a record-tying 11
awards, taking best picture and sweeping each of its categories. Sean
Penn took the best-actor prize as a vengeful father in "Mystic River,"
and Charlize Theron won for best actress as serial killer Aileen
Wuornos in "Monster." Supporting-performance Oscars went to Tim Robbins
as a man emotionally hamstrung by childhood trauma in "Mystic River"
and Renee Zellweger as a hardy Confederate survivor in "Cold Mountain."
(AP, 3/1/04)
2004 Feb 29, Jerome Lawrence (88),
playwright, died. His 39 plays included “Auntie Mame.”
(SFC, 12/28/04, p.D1)
2004 Feb 29, In central China a
bus carrying migrant workers to faraway factory jobs plunged off a
mountain road, killing 12 and injuring 35.
(AP, 2/29/04)
2004 Feb 29, In Germany Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder's party was handed a stinging defeat by voters in
Hamburg in elections reflecting the pent-up anger over his push to cut
cherished state benefits.
(AP, 2/29/04)
2004 Feb 29, Haiti's Pres.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned and flew into exile. The capital fell
into chaos, and the US said international peacekeepers, including
Americans, would be deployed soon. Boniface Alexandre, the Supreme
Court Justice, took over as interim president. PM Yvon Neptune
continued as head of the government. Guy Philippe (36), head of a band
of former exiled soldiers, said his forces would stop fighting.
(AP, 2/29/04)(ST, 3/2/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 29, Israel's Supreme
Court ordered the government to suspend work for one week on a section
of the West Bank security barrier, an attorney said, while security
forces arrested three Palestinian youths who planned an attack.
(AP, 2/29/04)
2004 Feb 29, Japan's agriculture
minister slammed a senior poultry industry executive for failing to
report the deaths of tens of thousands of chickens on his farm, where
officials have confirmed the country's third outbreak of bird flu.
(AP, 2/29/04)
2004 Feb 29, Spain averted a
bombing by the Basque separatist group ETA after the Civil Guard
stopped a small truck and found about 1,100 pounds of bomb-making
chemicals.
(AP, 2/29/04)
2004 Feb, The Palo Alto-based
Facebook.com, an Internet social networking website, was founded by
Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. He put Harvard’s yearbook on the
internet and the creation spread to Yale and beyond. He soon faced a
lawsuit from 3 other Harvard students, who alleged he stole their idea.
In 2009 Ben Mezrich authored “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding
of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal.”
(SSFC, 10/23/05, p.A1)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.69)(Econ,
7/21/07, p.66)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.72)
2004 Feb, Marc Gonsalves, Tom
Howes and Keith Stansell were captured by the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC), when their surveillance plane went down in a
rebel stronghold in the country's south.
(AP, 3/10/07)
2004 Feb, UNESCO awarded its press
freedom prize to Cuba's jailed independent reporter Raul Rivero.
(AP, 3/25/04)
2004 Feb, Mohammad Munim
al-Izmerly (65), Iraqi weapons scientist, died while in US custody. His
body was delivered to Al-Kharkh Hospital in Baghdad. The Egyptian-born
scientist had been in US detention since April 2003. The Americans
enclosed a death certificate saying he died of "brainstem compression."
An Investigation into his death was opened in 2005.
(AP, 3/25/05)
2004 Feb, Khursheda Sultonov (8),
the daughter of an ethnic Tajik, was stabbed to death in St.
Petersburg, Russia, as her father was beaten by youths shouting ethnic
slurs. In March, 2006, a jury convicted 8 youths of hooliganism but
cleared the single suspect charged with killing his daughter on the
charge of bias murder.
(AP, 6/22/06)
2004 Feb, South Korea ratified its
1st free trade agreement. Its partner was Chile.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.39)
2004 Mar 1, US officials said the
United States has turned over seven Russian citizens who were being
held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
(AP, 3/1/04)
2004 Mar 1, The California Supreme
Court ruled a Roman Catholic charity had to offer birth-control
coverage to its employees.
(AP, 3/1/05)
2004 Mar 1, An explosion in an
unlicensed coal mine in northern China killed 28 miners.
(AP, 3/3/04)
2004 Mar 1, In Haiti rebels rolled
into the capital and were met by hundreds of residents dancing in the
streets and cheering the ouster of Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide. U.S.
Marines and French troops moved to take control of the impoverished
country as Aristide arrived in South Africa. There were reports of
reprisal killings.
(AP, 3/1/04)(WSJ, 3/2/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 1, Jean-Bertrand Aristide
from the Central African Republic said in a telephone interview that he
was "forced to leave" Haiti by U.S. military forces.
(AP, 3/1/04)(SFC, 3/02/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 1, In eastern India a
motorboat packed with players and spectators heading to a cricket match
capsized, and police said 20 people were feared dead.
(AP, 3/1/04)
2004 Mar 1, Iraqi politicians
agreed on an interim constitution with 2 official languages, a wide
ranging bill of rights and a single chief executive, bridging a gulf
between members over the role of Islam in the future government.
(AP, 3/1/04)(WSJ, 3/2/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 1, President Vladimir
Putin nominated Mikhail Fradkov, a former tax police chief who is
Russia's representative to the European Union, for the post of prime
minister.
(AP, 3/1/04)
2004 Mar 1, Kujo Krijestorac (51),
a key witness to the murder of Serbian PM Zoran Djindjic, was gunned
down near his Belgrade home.
(AP, 3/9/04)
2004 Mar 2, Alan Greenspan said
interest rates are too low for long term economic stability, but did
not indicate when they would be raised. The DJIA closed at 10,592.
(WSJ, 3/3/04, p.A3)
2004 Mar 2, John Kerry won the
10-state Super Tuesday series and knocked the fight out of his spirited
rival, John Edwards.
(AP, 3/3/04)
2004 Mar 2, Californians voters
approved Proposition 57, Gov. Schwarzenegger's $15 billion bond
measure, to be repaid over the next 9 to 14 years. Prop 58 to prohibit
future deficit financing also passed.
(SFC, 3/03/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 2, Residents of
Killington, Vermont, voted to join New Hampshire due to a dispute over
property taxes.
(ST, 3/2/04, p.A5)(AP, 3/2/04)
2004 Mar 2, Bernard Ebbers, former
WorldCom CEO, was indicted on federal charges in the
multibillion-dollar accounting scandal at the telecommunications giant.
Scott Sullivan, his top financial officer, pleaded guilty and agreed to
testify against him.
(AP, 3/2/04)(WSJ, 2/18/05, p.A1)
2004 Mar 2, NY state filed charges
against the mayor of New Paltz for marrying gay couples.
(WSJ, 3/3/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 2, NASA scientists
reported that the Mars rover Opportunity had discovered evidence that
water was once present on the surface.
(SFC, 3/03/04, p.A2)
2004 Mar 2, Mercedes McCambridge
(85), Academy Award-winning actress, died in San Diego.
(AP, 3/2/05)
2004 Mar 2, Marge Schott (75), the
controversial former owner of the Cincinnati Reds, died.
(AP, 3/2/05)
2004 Mar 2, In Chechnya rebel
attacks and land mines killed five Russian soldiers.
(AP, 3/3/04)
2004 Mar 2, In China authorities
shut down water supplies after a combination of synthetic ammonia and
nitrogen from the Sichuan General Chemical Factory leaked into the Tuo
River. Nearly 1 million people were left without water for drinking and
bathing.
(AP, 3/5/04)
2004 Mar 2, The European Space
Agency launched its Rosetta lander. It was intended to land on comet
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in May, 2014.
(SFC, 7/18/05, p.A4)
2004 Mar 2, Haiti rebel leader Guy
Philippe declared himself the new chief of Haiti's military, which had
been disbanded by ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
(AP, 3/2/04)
2004 Mar 2, Attacks on Shiite
Muslims in Pakistan and Iraq killed at least 193 people. 180 were
killed at the Khadimiya shrine in Karbala, where Shiites were
celebrating Ashura, the holiest day in their religious calendar. An
Iranian vice president blamed al-Qaida for the attacks.
(AP, 3/3/04)(SSFC, 2/20/05, p.A14)
2004 Mar 2, Khalil al-Zaben (59),
a close associate of Yasser Arafat, was assassinated in Gaza City by
unidentified gunmen. Separately Arafat agreed to a new system for
paying his security forces.
(SFC, 3/03/04, p.A8)
2004 Mar 2, Russian authorities
said they have confirmed that a man killed in the Dagestan region a few
days earlier was Ruslan Gelayev, one of the Chechnya's most powerful
rebel warlords.
(AP, 3/2/04)
2004 Mar 2, In Venezuela
demonstrators hurled rocks and gasoline bombs at soldiers as protests
intensified after the elections council ruled against an opposition
petition to force a presidential recall referendum.
(AP, 3/3/04)
2004 Mar 3, In Portland, Ore.,
hundreds of gay couples applied for marriage licenses following an
overnight policy change by county commissioners.
(SFC, 3/04/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 3, The Walt Disney
Company's board voted to strip Michael Eisner of his chairman's post
while retaining him as CEO.
(AP, 3/3/05)
2004 Mar 3, Royal Dutch/Shell
announced the resignations of CEO Sir Philip Watts and Walter van de
Vijver, head of exploration and production.
(WSJ, 4/20/04, p.A12)
2004 Mar 3, Harvard reported that
it used private funds to create 17 new stem-cell lines from discarded
fertility clinic embryos.
(WSJ, 3/4/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 3, Sumantra Ghoshal (55),
business academic, died of a stroke in London. His 12 books included
“Managing Across Borders” (1989). In 2005 Julian Birkinshaw and Gita
Piramal authored “Sumantra Ghoshal on Management: A Force for Good.”
(Econ, 6/11/05, p.82)
2004 Mar 3, Ethiopia was reported
to have begun relocating hundreds of thousands of people from
drought-prone areas to fertile lands to alleviate food shortages.
Relocation began in May 2003 and many of the resettled people continued
to face hunger, diarrhea and malaria.
(AP, 3/3/04)(SFC, 7/19/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 3, French authorities
said a previously unknown terror group is threatening to blow up French
railway tracks unless it is paid millions of dollars.
(AP, 3/3/04)
2004 Mar 3, Guatemala's Congress
fired Oscar Dubon, the government's chief accountant, after he fled the
country amid allegations of political corruption.
(AP, 3/4/04)
2004 Mar 3, Haitian looters found
rotting stacks of cash, estimated at $350,000, stashed in a tunnel
beneath former Pres. Aristide's mansion.
(WSJ, 3/4/04, p.A14)
2004 Mar 3, In Petit Goave, Haiti,
an armed posse tracked down Ti Roro. They beat him with sticks, took
him to the morgue to identify his alleged victims, ringed him with
gasoline-soaked tires and burned him alive. As he was burning, he
admitted to all of the 15 people he killed in the last year.
(AP, 3/5/04)
2004 Mar 3, In India's
Jammu-Kashmir state a suspected militant with explosives on his body
grabbed a guard's rifle and opened fire in a jail courtyard, setting
off a shootout that killed six people as well as himself.
(AP, 3/3/04)
2004 Mar 3, Israeli helicopters
fired two missiles at a car carrying Hamas militants on a road through
the Gaza Strip, killing three people.
(AP, 3/3/04)
2004 Mar 3, Malaysia's new PM
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi called a snap national election that will pit the
long-ruling secular coalition government against a fundamentalist
Islamic opposition.
(AP, 3/3/04)
2004 Mar 3, In eastern Nepal
leftist rebels attacked a telecommunications tower in mountains,
killing at least 29 soldiers and leaving 10 others missing.
(AP, 3/3/04)
2004 Mar 3, Pakistani authorities
detained at least 15 tribal leaders in a remote border region near
Afghanistan for failing to turn over suspected al-Qaeda fugitives.
(AP, 3/3/04)
2004 Mar 3, In Yemen security
forces arrested Abdul Raouf Naseeb, a leading al-Qaeda member, along
with other militants in the southern mountains.
(AP, 3/4/04)
2004 Mar 4, It was reported that
new nickels honoring the 1803 Louisiana Purchase have been shipped to
the Federal Reserve. A new Jefferson nickel was set for 2005.
(SFC, 4/25/03, B3)(SFC, 11/7/03, p.A2)(AP,
3/4/04)(SFC, 9/14/04, p.D3)
2004 Mar 4, George Pake (b.1924),
founding head (1970-1978) of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC),
died in Tucson, Ariz.
(SFC, 10/25/00, p.D1)(SFC, 3/11/04, p.C5)
2004 Mar 4, Brunei officials
reported that two retired senior army and police intelligence officers
and a businessman had been jailed without trial for leaking government
secrets, some of them posted on the Internet.
(AP, 3/4/04)
2004 Mar 4, Mounir el Motassadeq,
the only person in the world convicted in the 9-11 attacks, won a
retrial in a German appeals court.
(AP, 3/4/05)
2004 Mar 4, Israeli forces raided
the southern Gaza town of Rafah, killing a 14-year-old boy, bulldozing
houses and damaging the water and electricity networks.
(AP, 3/4/04)
2004 Mar 4, Ukrainian authorities
pulled a private station off the air, four days after it began
broadcasting U.S.-funded Radio Liberty's shortwave programming.
(AP, 3/4/04)
2004 Mar 5, Pres. Bush welcomed
Mexican Pres. Fox to his Texas ranch for a 2-day visit.
(SFC, 3/06/04, p.A3)
2004 Mar 5, Martha Stewart was
convicted in New York of obstructing justice and lying to the
government about why she'd unloaded her Imclone stock just before the
price plummeted; her ex-stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, also was found
guilty in the stock scandal. Each later received a five-month prison
sentence.
(AP, 3/5/05)
2004 Mar 5, U.S. special
operations forces killed nine suspected Taliban rebels in a firefight
in eastern Afghanistan after the militants tried to sneak by their
position.
(AP, 3/6/04)
2004 Mar 5, Suspected Taliban
gunmen killed a Turkish engineer and an Afghan soldier after stopping
their car along a main road linking the capital with the turbulent
south.
(AP, 3/5/04)
2004 Mar 5, China's Premier Wen
Jiabao addressed the 2,904-member legislature and turned attention and
resources to the hundreds of millions of citizens who work the land.
(AP, 3/5/04)(SFC, 3/06/04, p.A10)
2004 Mar 5, Carlos Julio Arosemena
(84), one-time president of Ecuador whose term ended in a 1963 military
coup, died. Elected vice president in 1960, Arosemena rose to the
presidency following the ouster of President Velasco Ibarra a year
later in a military coup.
(AP, 3/5/04)
2004 Mar 5, In Haiti some 3
thousand supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide marched on the
U.S. and French embassies, shouting their anger at his ouster. A
seven-member council met for the first time to help form a transitional
government.
(AP, 3/5/04)
2004 Mar 5, The signing of Iraq's
interim constitution was delayed indefinitely after five Shiite members
of the Governing Council rejected concessions made to Kurds and the
makeup of the presidency.
(AP, 3/5/04)
2004 Mar 5, A bomb exploded as
south Lebanon's police chief was driving across a bridge in the eastern
region, blowing off one foot and mangling another.
(AP, 3/5/04)
2004 Mar 5, Libya acknowledged
stockpiling 44,000 pounds of mustard gas and disclosed the location of
a production plant in a declaration submitted to the world's chemical
weapons watchdog.
(AP, 3/5/04)
2004 Mar 5, Mexican Air Force
pilots filmed 11 unidentified flying objects in the skies over southern
Campeche state. The video was publicly aired May10.
(AP, 5/11/04)
2004 Mar 5, In Nepal some 10,000
demonstrators marched through the streets of the capital, the latest
protest against the king for dismissing an elected government and
replacing it with one loyal to the monarchy.
(AP, 3/5/04)
2004 Mar 6, President Bush backed
off on plans to require frequent Mexican travelers to the United States
to be fingerprinted and photographed before crossing the border.
(AP, 3/6/05)
2004 Mar 6, A water taxi carrying
about 25 passengers capsized in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, killing one
person. Three others were missing and presumed dead. Navy reservists
rescued 21 people.
(AP, 3/6/04)(SFC, 3/08/04, p.A3)
2004 Mar 6, China handed its
enormous military a double-digit spending increase in a show of
support. According to China's 2004 budget, military spending for the
PLA will rise 11.6 percent this year, an increase of $2.6 billion.
(AP, 3/6/04)
2004 Mar 6, Thousands of women
marched through Paris to press for equal rights for women and show
support for a law to ban Islamic head scarves in public schools.
(AP, 3/6/04)
2004 Mar 6, It was reported that 4
compromising videos have been released showing Mexican political party
leaders and public servants accepting briefcases full of cash, gambling
at the high rollers' table in Las Vegas and offering to procure
business contracts for millions of dollars.
(AP, 3/6/04)
2004 Mar 6, Palestinian gunmen and
car bombers attacked a major crossing point between the Gaza Strip and
Israel. At least four attackers and two Palestinian policemen were
killed, and no Israeli soldiers were hurt.
(AP, 3/6/04)
2004 Mar 6, Hundreds of thousands
of Venezuelans marched through Caracas to protest the rejection of a
petition aimed at recalling President Hugo Chavez.
(AP, 3/7/04)
2004 Mar 7, An investiture
ceremony was held in Concord, N.H., for V. Gene Robinson, the Episcopal
Church's first openly gay bishop.
(AP, 3/7/05)
2004 Mar 7, Seattle's mayor said
the city will begin recognizing the marriages of gay employees who tie
the knot elsewhere, although it will not conduct its own same-sex
weddings.
(AP, 3/8/04)
2004 Mar 7, Paul Winfield (62), an
Academy Award-nominated actor who was known for his versatility in
stage, film and television roles, died of a heart attack.
(AP, 3/9/04)
2004 Mar 7, In Austria Joerg
Haider Haider's Freedom Party won 42.4 percent of the vote, compared to
just over 38 percent for the rival Socialists in Carinthia province.
(AP, 3/8/04)
2004 Mar 7, in China's Muslim
Xinjiang region the No. 2 Mine of the Hami Coal Co. flooded. 25 managed
to escape while rescuers worked desperately to save survivors. Rescue
workers saved 15 coal miners trapped in a flooded shaft, but seven
miners were still missing.
(AP, 3/8/04)
2004 Mar 7, In Greece Costas
Karamanlis (47) led the New Democracy party over former Foreign
Minister George Papandreou's Socialists 45.4 percent to 40.6 percent.
The result gave New Democracy 165 seats in the 300-member parliament.
The Socialists (Pasok) received 117 seats, Greece's Communist Party got
12 and the Coalition of the Radical Left won six.
(AP, 3/8/04)(Econ, 3/13/04, p.51)
2004 Mar 7, In Haiti U.S. Marines
shot and killed one of the gunmen who fired at a huge demonstration of
protesters celebrating the flight from Haiti of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. That raised the toll to six dead and more than 30 injured in
the protest.
(AP, 3/8/04)
2004 Mar 7, In Iraq insurgents in
a car fired rocket-propelled grenades at a police station in Mosul, and
two Iraqi civilians were killed.
(AP, 3/7/04)
2004 Mar 7, Israeli troops traded
heavy gunfire with Palestinians in a raid near Bureij Refugee Camp,
killing 14 Palestinians. Among the dead were 11 militants and three
boys between the ages of 8 and 15, and 81 people were wounded.
(AP, 3/7/04)(AP, 3/8/04)
2004 Mar 7, In central Japan a
helicopter chartered by a TV news station crashed while filming a
highway accident, killing all four aboard,
(AP, 3/7/04)
2004 Mar 7, The Samson, a ferry
carrying 113 people, vanished after it was caught in a cyclone as it
sailed between the Indian Ocean islands of Comoros and Madagascar.
There were 2 survivors. The drownings brought the death toll from
Cyclone Gafilo to 154.
(AP, 3/10/04)(AP, 3/11/04)
2004 Mar 7, Zimbabwean authorities
seized a U.S.-registered cargo plane at Harare carrying 64 "suspected
mercenaries" and military equipment. Equatorial Guinea later said the
men were mercenaries from South Africa en route to stage a coup. Twenty
South Africans, 18 Namibians, 23 Angolans, two Congolese and one
Zimbabwean carrying a South African passport were arrested when their
aging Boeing 727 was impounded. Another 15 suspects were arrested in
Equatorial Guinea the next day.
(AP, 3/8/04)(WSJ, 3/10/04, p.A1)(AP, 3/10/04)
2004 Mar 8, An Ohio nuclear power
plant was allowed to reopen following a 2-year shutdown over an acid
leak.
(WSJ, 3/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 8, Todd Bertuzzi of the
Vancouver Canucks slugged Colorado Avalanche forward Steve Moore during
a game, leaving Moore with a broken neck, concussion and facial cuts.
Bertuzzi, who was suspended indefinitely from the NHL, later pleaded
guilty to criminal assault.
(AP, 3/8/05)
2004 Mar 8, Keith Hopkins (69), a
historian who brought an innovative sociological approach to the study
of ancient Rome, died in Cambridge, England. His books included
"Conquerors and Slaves" and "Death and Renewal."
(AP, 3/15/04)(SFC, 3/16/04, p.B7)
2004 Mar 8, Actor Robert
Pastorelli (49) was found dead in his Hollywood Hills, Calif., home.
(AP, 3/8/05)
2004 Mar 8, China's parliament
began discussing a constitutional amendment that would protect private
property for the first time since the 1949 communist revolution.
(AP, 3/8/04)
2004 Mar 8, Guinea-Bissau soldiers
released deposed Pres. Kumba Yala from house arrest, six months after
he was ousted in a bloodless coup on Sep 14.
(AP, 3/9/04)
2004 Mar 8, In Haiti US Marines
shot and killed the driver of a vehicle speeding up to a military
checkpoint.
(AP, 3/9/04)
2004 Mar 8, Iraq's Governing
Council signed a landmark interim constitution after resolving a
political impasse sparked by objections from the country's most
powerful cleric.
(AP, 3/8/04)
2004 Mar 8, Abul Abbas (56), the
Palestinian who planned the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro
passenger ship in which a wheelchair-bound American tourist was killed
and thrown overboard, died of natural causes in Baghdad while in U.S.
custody.
(AP, 3/10/04)
2004 Mar 8, Syrian authorities
broke up a rare protest by human rights activists demanding political
and civil reforms on the 41st anniversary of the ruling party's
accession to power.
(AP, 3/8/04)
2004 Mar 9, John Allen Muhammad
(43) was sentenced to death in Manassas, Va., for his 2002 murder
rampage in the Washington DC area.
(SFC, 3/10/04, p.A3)
2004 Mar 9, Britain ended a 3-year
review and agreed to allow farmers to grow one variety genetically
modified "GM" corn.
(WSJ, 3/10/04, p.A14)
2004 Mar 9, In Chad 2 days of
fighting broke out as the army battled Islamic militants near a remote
village on the country's western border with Niger, killing 43
"terrorists" of a group suspected of links with al-Qaeda.
(AP, 3/12/04)
2004 Mar 9, China reported that it
would scrap the 8% tax on farmers' crops over the next 5 years. The
vestige of feudalism was established 4,000 years ago during the Bronze
Age.
(AP, 3/9/04)
2004 Mar 9, Colombian troops
killed at least 12 leftist guerrillas and captured 40 others in
separate offensives across the country.
(AP, 3/10/04)
2004 Mar 9, In Haiti Gerard
Latortue (69), a lawyer and economist, was named as interim prime
minister.
(SFC, 3/10/04, p.A8)
2004 Mar 9, In Iraq 2 US civilians
and their Iraqi interpreter were killed. 4 Iraqis were arrested and
appeared to be active Iraqi police officers working with a Saddam
Hussein loyalist.
(WSJ, 3/12/04, p.A1)(SFC, 3/13/04, p.A3)
2004 Mar 9, Israeli forces backed
by tanks and combat helicopters raided the West Bank town of Jenin,
prompting a gun battle that killed a Palestinian woman in her home.
(AP, 3/9/04)
2004 Mar 9, Groundbreaking
ceremonies were set for a research center on the Israeli-Jordan border.
The Bridging the Rift foundation, launched in 1999, planned a $30
million environmental research center created with the assistance of
California's Stanford Univ.
(SFC, 2/28/04, p.A8)
2004 Mar 9, A shootout between
unidentified gunmen and government troops in Nigeria's oil city of
Warri killed five people, including one soldier. Separately an
overturned candle ignited a fire that raged through a shantytown in
Lagos.
(AP, 3/10/04)
2004 Mar 9, Pakistan tested its
longest-range missile yet, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and
hitting targets deep inside neighboring India.
(AP, 3/9/04)
2004 Mar 10, Lee Boyd Malvo,
teenage sniper, was sentenced in Chesapeake, Va., to life in prison.
(AP, 3/10/05)
2004 Mar 10, Four major US
Internet service providers filed a series of lawsuits meant to shutdown
a number of leading spammers.
(SFC, 3/11/04, p.C1)
2004 Mar 10, The DJIA tumbled for
a 3rd session, down 160 to 10,296.
(SFC, 3/11/04, p.C1)
2004 Mar 10, Argentina and the IMF
signed an accord to release a $3.1 billion loan. Meetings with
creditors were scheduled to re-schedule $82 billion in loans that the
government defaulted on in 2002. Bondholders were being offered 25
cents on the dollar.
(WSJ, 3/11/04, p.A14)
2004 Mar 10, Brazil's government
said the army burned all documents about the suppression of a 1970s
insurgency against the military dictatorship. The papers were destroyed
in the 1970s and 1980s in accordance with laws in force at the time.
(AP, 3/10/04)
2004 Mar 10, France's government
worked to calm a revolt by scientists angry over funding cuts, even as
trade unions called for more protests.
(AP, 3/10/04)
2004 Mar 10, U.S. Marines shot and
killed at least two Haitians in overnight gun battles.
(AP, 3/10/04)
2004 Mar 10, India's cricketers
arrived for their first full tour of Pakistan in 14 years.
(AP, 3/10/04)
2004 Mar 10, In Israel 2 bills
supporting civil marriage were voted down in the parliament. Thousands
of Israel's rabbis have gone on strike, scaling back wedding and
funeral services, to protest the government's withholding of salaries.
The government has not paid salaries to 3,000 rabbis and employees of
municipal rabbinates and religious councils for more than half a year.
(AP, 3/10/04)
2004 Mar 10, Thai PM Thaksin
Shinawatra replaced his finance, interior and defense ministers in a
Cabinet reshuffle as the government faces a Muslim insurgency in the
south, a volatile stock market and a public outcry over a privatization
plan.
(AP, 3/10/04)
2004 Mar 10, In Turkey 2 suicide
attackers stormed a Masonic lodge in Istanbul opening fire with
automatic weapons and setting off explosions that killed one person and
wounded five.
(AP, 3/10/04)
2004 Mar 11, The California
Supreme Court halted gay weddings in San Francisco for at least a few
months while it decides whether they are legal.
(AP, 3/12/04)(SFC, 3/12/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 11, The California Office
of Environmental Health Hazzard Assessment raised the action level for
reporting perchlorate pollution in drinking water from 4 to 6 ppb.
(WSJ, 3/12/04, p.A8)
2004 Mar 11, In San Diego 4
Marines were killed when their small UC-35 jet crashed on landing at
Air Station Miramar.
(SFC, 3/12/04, p.B3)
2004 Mar 11, Canadian officials
said a "very sophisticated criminal scheme" bilked the Defense
Department of tens of millions of dollars in computer contracts over 10
years. Public Works Minister Stephen Owen said the government is going
after computer giant Hewlett Packard, the prime contractor in
$160-million worth of military computer hardware and support services.
(AP, 3/11/04)
2004 Mar 11, In Iraq 2 American
soldiers were killed when the Humvee they were riding in struck a
homemade bomb.
(AP, 3/12/04)
2004 Mar 11, In Madrid, Spain, a
series of 10 bombs hidden in backpacks exploded in quick succession at
3 stations, blowing apart four commuter trains. 191 people were killed
and over 1,450 wounded. Spanish leaders were quick to accuse Basque
terrorists but a shadowy group claimed responsibility in the name of
al-Qaeda. On October 31, 2007, 3 lead defendants were convicted of
murder. Four other top suspects were acquitted of murder but convicted
of lesser charges. In all 21 of the 28 defendants were convicted. On
July 17, 2008, a Spanish court cleared four of the 21 people charged
for crimes related to the train bombings. In 2009 7 people were
indicted for helping the bombers flee.
(WSJ, 3/12/04, p.A1)(AP, 3/13/04)(SFC, 3/13/04,
p.A1)(SFC, 3/19/04, p.A3)(AP, 3/23/08)(AP, 10/31/07)(Reuters,
7/17/08)(AP, 11/2/09)
2004 Mar 12, An FBI proposal was
made public to require all broadband Internet providers to support easy
wiretapping.
(SFC, 3/13/04, p.C2)
2004 Mar 12, In Fresno, Ca.,
Marcus Wesson (57) was arrested on suspicion of killing 9 family
members, aged 1-24. He lived a bizarre life of polygamy and incest,
even fathering two of his victims with his own daughters. In 2005
Wesson was convicted on 9 counts of murder and sentenced to death. In
2009 reporter Alysia Sofios authored “Where Hope Begins: One Family's
Journey Out of Tragedy-and the Reporter Who Helped Them Make It.”
(AP, 3/14/04)(SSFC, 3/14/04, p.A1)(SFC, 6/18/05,
p.B7)(SFC, 7/28/05, p.B4)(SFC, 9/14/09, p.A1)
2004 Mar 12, Chinese state media
reported that a 1,930-mile railway project to link China and Europe was
announced by Kanat Zhangaskin, vice president of the Kazakhstan
National Railway Co.
(AP, 3/12/04)
2004 Mar 12, Haiti's new prime
minister, Gerard Latortue, was sworn into office. US Marines killed two
men during a patrol in Haiti and said they were gunmen who had
previously fired on the Marines, although their weapons were never
recovered. Witnesses said the dead were bystanders.
(AP, 3/14/04)(AP, 3/12/05)
2004 Mar 12, Ivory Coast's ruling
party accused opposition groups of plotting with rebels to overthrow
the government, and it called on militant youth supporters to
"mobilize" in defense.
(AP, 3/12/04)
2004 Mar 12, South Korean markets
plunged and finance officials scrambled to emergency policy meetings
after President Roh Moo-hyun was stripped of his executive powers in an
unprecedented impeachment for illegal electioneering. Roh's powers were
reinstated by South Korea's Constitutional Court the following May.
(WSJ, 3/12/04, p.A1)(AP, 3/12/05)
2004 Mar 12, Millions of Spaniards
marched to protest train bombings the day before that killed 191 people.
(AP, 3/12/05)
2004 Mar 12, In Qamishli, Syria,
spectators inside the stadium were crushed in a stampede to escape an
attack by rival fans and at least 5 people were killed. A riot broke
out the next day during funeral services for 3 of the dead. The soccer
riots spread to 3 other towns over the next few days and left 25 people
dead and more than 100 injured in Kurdish areas of northern Syria.
(AP, 3/13/04)(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 12, Somchai Neelapaichit,
Thailand human rights lawyer, was kidnapped in Bangkok and never heard
from again. 2 days before he vanished he had formally accused the
police of torturing 5 Muslim men in custody.
(Econ, 3/14/09, p.46)
2004 Mar 13, Near Barstow,
California, robotic vehicles began a 200-mile road race sponsored by
DARPA. The Pentagon sponsored race ended without a winner, as none of
the autonomous vehicles built by the 15 qualifying teams was able to
travel farther than 7 miles from the starting line.
(SFC, 3/13/04, p.A1)(AP, 3/14/04)
2004 Mar 13, In Afghanistan
Taliban armed with rockets and heavy machine guns attacked a government
office near the Afghan-Pakistan border, sparking a firefight that
killed one Afghan soldier and three Taliban.
(AP, 3/14/04)
2004 Mar 13 Iran froze inspections
of its nuclear facilities after the U.N. atomic agency censured Tehran
for hiding suspect activities. Tehran relented two days later.
(AP, 3/12/05)
2004 Mar 13, In Tikrit, Iraq, a
roadside bomb killed two American soldiers and wounded three. 3
American soldiers died in two bomb explosions in Baghdad. A 4th died
from his injuries the next morning.
(AP, 3/13/04)(AP, 3/14/04)
2004 Mar 13, Israeli soldiers shot
and killed two Palestinian militants in an off-limits military zone
between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 3/13/04)
2004 Mar 13, In Pakistan the India
cricket team beat a Pakistan team at Karachi's National Stadium in a
match that came down to the final ball.
(SSFC, 3/14/04, p.A15)
2004 Mar 14, In southeastern
Afghanistan U.S.-led troops surprised eight enemy fighters in a cave
complex, prompting a gunbattle, which left 3 militiamen killed and 5
others wounded.
(AP, 3/15/04)
2004 Mar 14, China took symbolic
steps toward a more capitalist society, amending its constitution to
protect private property rights and formalizing a former president's
once-unthinkable legacy, inviting entrepreneurs to join the Communist
Party.
(AP, 3/14/04)
2004 Mar 14, Georgia's President
Mikhail Saakashvili put the country's military on alert after the
restive Adzharia region barred him from entering.
(AP, 3/14/04)
2004 Mar 14, In Haiti French
troops took over patrols in a slum where U.S. Marines killed at least
two people.
(AP, 3/14/04)
2004 Mar 14, In Israel 2
explosions killed eight people and wounding 18 at the seaport of
Ashdod. Police said 2 Palestinian suicide bombers were responsible.
(AP, 3/14/04)
2004 Mar 14, In South Korea tens
of thousands of demonstrators streamed into the streets of Seoul to
protest the impeachment of Pres. Roh Moo-hyun. Some 50,000 had gathered
the night before.
(AP, 3/14/04)
2004 Mar 14, Russian voters
overwhelmingly handed President Vladimir Putin a second four-year term.
It had long been seen as a foregone conclusion.
(AP, 3/14/04)
2004 Mar 14, Elections in Spain
returned the Socialists to power. Mariano Rajoy (48) of the ruling
conservative Popular Party was the prime minister's hand-picked
candidate to succeed him. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of the Socialist
Party hoped to end eight years of conservative government after
promising to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq and address unaffordable
housing and job insecurity at home. PM Jose Maria Aznar's conservatives
became the first government that had backed Washington in Iraq to be
voted from office. Zapatero led the Socialists to victory.
(AP, 3/15/04)(Econ, 3/20/04, p.49)
2004 Mar 15, The Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame inducted Prince, Bob Seger, Jackson Browne and George
Harrison along with ZZ Top, Traffic and the Dells.
(SFC, 3/16/04, p.A2)
2004 Mar 15, Missouri jurors
agreed that vapors from butter flavoring at the microwave popcorn
factory had permanently ruined the lungs of Eric Peoples. The verdict
was against International Flavors and Fragrances Inc. and its
subsidiary Bush Boake Allen Inc. The flavoring manufacturers were
ordered to pay $18 million to Peoples and $2 million to his wife.
(AP, 3/16/04)
2004 Mar 15, Ohio police
identified Charles A. McCoy Jr. (28) as the gunman in two dozen highway
shootings that have terrorized motorists for months.
(AP, 3/16/04)(SFC, 3/18/04, p.A4)
2004 Mar 15, Bank of America and
FleetBoston Financial agreed to pay $675 million in fines and fee cuts
to settle improper mutual-fund trading. Some 13,000 job cuts were
expected following the merger of the 2 companies.
(WSJ, 3/16/04, p.A1)(WSJ, 3/17/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 15, The Bill Gates
Foundation donated $47 million to private agencies carrying out AIDS
prevention programs in India.
(SFC, 3/16/04, p.A2)
2004 Mar 15, Martha Stewart
resigned from the board of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia 10 days
after being convicted in a stock scandal.
(AP, 3/15/05)
2004 Mar 15, A new computer worm,
named "Phatbot," began appearing in the Asia-Pacific region. Most call
it a variation of the longstanding Gaobot or Agobot family, and
sometimes as Polybot. When the worm is run, it sets the system to
autostart the worm at boot time; attempts to terminate security
software running on the computer; and probes network shares in an
attempt to spread itself.
(AP, 3/17/04)
2004 Mar 15, Scientists announced
the discovery of a new planetoid named Sedna. The frozen, shiny red
world is some 8 billion miles from Earth, the most distant known object
in the solar system. Some placed it in the outer periphery of a region
called the Oort Cloud.
(AP, 3/16/04)(SFC, 3/16/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 15, The WHO reported that
drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis had reached troubling levels in
Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
(WSJ, 3/16/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 15, The U.S. military
said it released 23 Afghan and three Pakistani citizens from the U.S.
Navy prison for terrorist suspects in Cuba, leaving about 610 still in
detention.
(AP, 3/16/04)
2004 Mar 15, Canadian National
Railway reached a tentative agreement with the Canadian Auto Workers
union that could end a 3½-week-old strike by 5,000 employees.
(AP, 3/15/04)
2004 Mar 15, Georgia's President
Mikhail Saakashvili put trade restrictions on Adzharia after Aslan
Abashidze ignored a deadline to accept federal authority.
(AP, 3/14/04)
2004 Mar 15, Iran relented and
decided to allow a visit at the end of this month, after temporarily
freezing out international nuclear inspectors.
(AP, 3/15/04)
2004 Mar 15, In Iraq 4 American
missionary relief workers were killed in a drive-by shooting in Mosul.
(SFC, 3/16/04, p.A14)(AP, 3/15/05)
2004 Mar 15, Israeli helicopters
attacked two suspected Hamas weapons workshops in Gaza City and Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon called off a summit with his Palestinian
counterpart.
(AP, 3/15/04)
2004 Mar 15, Ousted Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide left his temporary exile in Africa and
flew to Jamaica despite opposition to his presence in the Caribbean.
(AP, 3/15/04)
2004 Mar 15, Pakistani police
diffused a large bomb inside a van parked in front of the US Consulate
in Karachi.
(SFC, 3/16/04, p.A3)
2004 Mar 15, In Saudi Arabia
authorities killed Khaled Ali Haj, a Yemeni, and Ibrahim bin Abdul-Aziz
bin Mohammed al-Mezeini, a Saudi. Haj, who also uses the name Abu Hazim
al-Sha'ir, was the "most dangerous" al-Qaeda operative in the region.
Haj was third on the government's list of Saudi Arabia's 26 most wanted
militants.
(AP, 3/16/04)
2004 Mar 15, Jose Luis Rodriguez
Zapatero, the leader of Spain's victorious Socialists, said he will
withdraw his nation's support for the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
(AP, 3/15/04)
2004 Mar 15, In Venezuela
opponents of President Hugo Chavez celebrated a Supreme Court ruling
that signatures on petitions seeking a presidential recall vote were
valid unless citizens disclaim them.
(AP, 3/16/04)
2004 Mar 16, Mitch Seavey won the
Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in nine days, 12 hours, 20 minutes and 22
seconds.
(AP, 3/16/05)
2004 Mar 16, China declared
victory in its fight against bird flu, saying it had "stamped out" all
of its known cases, while a factory worker in Thailand became Asia's
23rd victim of the virus.
(AP, 3/16/04)
2004 Mar 16, In Colombia Luis
Hipolito Ospina, a senior member of the leftist Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was arrested in Bogota.
(AP, 3/17/04)
2004 Mar 16, In Denmark police
raided Copenhagen's famed hippie enclave of Christiania, detaining 53
people in a major crackdown on the open sale of hashish. The enclave
took root in 1971 when dozens of hippies moved into the derelict
18th-century fort on state-owned land.
(AP, 3/16/04)
2004 Mar 16, Two contractors,
German and Dutch, working on a water-supply project south of Baghdad
were shot to death, and their deaths brought to six the number of
foreigners killed in drive-by shootings in the past 24 hours.
(AP, 3/16/04)(WSJ, 4/1/04, p.A10)
2004 Mar 16, Japan's Toshiba Corp
said that Guinness World Records had certified its stamp-sized hard
disk drives (HDDs) as the smallest in the world. The 0.85-inch HDDs,
unveiled in January, have storage capacity of up to four gigabytes and
will be used in products such as cellphones and digital camcorders.
(AP, 3/16/04)
2004 Mar 16, It was announced that
Carlos Slim, owner of Mexico’s Telmex, planned to buy a controlling
interest in Brazil’s biggest long distance operator, Embratel.
(Econ, 3/20/04, p.64)
2004 Mar 16, Hundreds of Pakistani
troops clashed with tribesmen suspected of sheltering al-Qaeda and
Taliban fugitives near the Afghan border. At least 15 paramilitary
soldiers and 24 suspects including some foreigners presumed to be
members of al-Qaeda, were killed in the raid on a mud-brick compound at
Kaloosha.
(AP, 3/16/04)(AP, 3/17/04)
2004 Mar 16, In Russia an apparent
natural gas explosion sheared off part of a nine-story apartment
building in the northern city of Arkhangelsk as residents slept,
killing some 58 people. Police suspected that valve scavenging
triggered the blast.
(AP, 3/16/04)(WSJ, 3/17/04, p.A1)(AP, 3/18/04)
2004 Mar 16, Spanish police
identified five additional Moroccan suspects they think took part in
last week's train bombing that killed 190 and injured 1,647 others.
(AP, 3/16/04)(AP, 3/23/04)
2004 Mar 16, Yemen authorities
said 9 suspects in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole had been arrested,
including 8 who escaped from jail in 2003.
(SFC, 3/17/04, p.A9)
2004 Mar 17, Charles A. McCoy Jr.,
suspected in a series of highway shootings in central Ohio, was
arrested in Las Vegas.
(AP, 3/17/05)
2004 Mar 17, Major league Baseball
banned THG, a steroid at the center of a criminal probe involving a
SF-area lab.
(WSJ, 3/18/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 17, Harvard researchers
reported that an enzyme in the brain appears to regulate appetite and
weight.
(WSJ, 3/18/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 17, John "J.J." Jackson
(62), former MTV personality, died in Los Angeles.
(AP, 3/17/05)
2004 Mar 17, Angola decided to
reject genetically modified food aid. The decision threatened to
disrupt distributions to hundreds of thousands of people.
(AP, 3/29/04)
2004 Mar 17, Axel Blumberg (23),
the son of businessman Juan Carlos Blumberg, was seized in Buenos
Aires. Kidnappers demanded a ransom of 50,000 pesos (16,000 dollars).
(www.jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2004-daily/24-04-2004/world/w10.htm)
2004 Mar 17, It was reported that
locusts have swarmed through the Australian Outback, devastating crops
just as farmers had begun recovering from a two-year drought.
(AP, 3/17/04)
2004 Mar 17, In Iraq a car bomb
tore apart the five-story Mount Lebanon Hotel in central Baghdad,
killing 7 people. In northeastern Iraq gunmen opened fire on a minibus,
killing three Iraqi journalists and wounding nine other employees of a
coalition-funded TV station. Insurgents killed two U.S. Marines who
were on patrol in al-Anbar province. In Mosul 4 US Baptist missionaries
were killed in a drive-by shooting.
(AP, 3/18/04)(SFC, 3/18/04, p.A1)(AP, 3/19/04)(WSJ,
4/1/04, p.A10)
2004 Mar 17, Israeli helicopters
fired two missiles into a crowd of suspected gunmen in a Palestinian
refugee camp, killing four people in a stepped-up campaign to root out
militants in the Gaza Strip. 2 teenage boys were killed in an air
strike at the Rafah refugee camp.
(AP, 3/17/04)(SFC, 3/18/04, p.A2)
2004 Mar 17, Israel's Supreme
Court imposed an open-ended freeze on construction of a 15-mile section
of the country's controversial West Bank separation barrier.
(AP, 3/18/04)
2004 Mar 17, The Maldives ferry
Enamaa was carrying far more than its capacity of up to 100 when a wave
overturned it. At least 18 people were killed. More than 50 others were
missing.
(AP, 3/18/04)
2004 Mar 17, In Kosovo ethnic
Albanians traded gunfire with Serbs after blaming them for the
drownings of two boys. The clashes left eight dead and more than 300
injured.
(AP, 3/17/04)
2004 Mar 18, Addressing thousands
of soldiers at Fort Campbell, Ky., President Bush warned that
terrorists could never be appeased and said there was no safety for any
nation that "lives at the mercy of gangsters and mass murderers."
(AP, 3/18/05)
2004 Mar 18, Overruling its staff,
the FCC declared that an expletive (the "F-word") uttered by rock star
Bono on NBC the previous year was indecent and profane.
(AP, 3/18/05)
2004 Mar 18, New Jersey officials
arrested 11 people in a pharmaceutical theft ring and charged them with
stealing some $3 million in drugs for resale.
(WSJ, 3/19/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 18, A 100-foot diameter
asteroid passed within 26,500 miles of Earth, the closest-ever brush on
record by a space rock.
(AP, 3/18/04)
2004 Mar 18, A rebel group in Chad
captured Amari Saifi, one of North Africa's most notorious terrorists,
along with 9 others. Saifi is and an Algerian extremist suspected in
the hostage-taking of 32 European tourists last year.
(AP, 5/14/04)
2004 Mar 18, Georgia's President
Mikhail Saakashvili met with Aslan Abashidze in Batumi, Ajaria, to
settle misunderstandings.
(Econ, 3/20/04, p.54)
2004 Mar 18, In northeast
Guatemala a bus collided with a tractor-trailer, killing at least 14
people.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 18, Jordan's King
Abdullah and PM Ariel Sharon held a secret meeting at the Israeli
leader's ranch to discuss Sharon's plan to withdraw unilaterally from
Palestinian areas.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 18, In Iraq a car bomb
exploded at a hotel in the southern city of Basra as a British military
patrol passed by, killing five Iraqi bystanders. US Army soldiers shot
2 al-Arabiya television network employees. [see Mar 19]
(AP, 3/18/04)(SFC, 3/30/04, p.A3)
2004 Mar 18, Albanians set fire to
Serb Orthodox churches in Kosovo as NATO scrambled to deploy up to
1,000 more troops to stifle an explosion of ethnic violence. The death
toll reached 31 with hundreds injured in fighting between Serbs and
ethnic Albanians as violence continued for a 2nd day.
(SFC, 3/19/04, p.A13)(Econ, 3/20/04, p.52)
2004 Mar 18, In northwestern
Uganda unidentified gunmen raided and looted a college and killed two
American missionaries and a Ugandan student.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 19, President Bush, on
the first anniversary of the Iraq war, urged unity in the war against
terrorism.
(AP, 3/19/05)
2004 Mar 19, The US Justice Dept.
issued a draft opinion that authorized the agency to transfer detainees
out of Iraq for interrogation.
(SSFC, 10/24/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 19, The Army dropped all
charges against Capt. James Yee, a military chaplain at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, who had been accused of mishandling classified information.
(AP, 3/19/05)
2004 Mar 19, Scientists reported
that Earth may be in the middle its 6th big extinction event, which
began some 50,000 years ago. A recent survey indicated population
extinctions in all the main ecosystems of Britain.
(SFC, 3/19/04, p.A5)
2004 Mar 19, Harrison McCain (76),
a New Brunswick farm boy who became a world-scale industrialist and the
king of the frozen french fry, died in a Boston hospital after a long
period of failing health. McCain Foods (f.1956) is the world's
undisputed french fry king. The company, which is still based in
Florenceville, NB, produces one-third of the planet's frozen french
fries.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 19, Edward G. Zubler
(79), GE research chemist and developer of the halogen lamp (1959),
died in Cleveland.
(SFC, 3/24/04, p.B7)
2004 Mar 19, In central
Afghanistan U.S. warplanes and ground forces killed five suspected
Taliban fighters at a compound in Uruzgan province.
(AP, 3/21/04)
2004 Mar 19, An Argentine federal
judge declared unconstitutional a presidential decree that pardoned
several high-ranking military officers accused of human rights abuses
during Argentina's Dirty War.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 19, In southwest Colombia
soldiers searching for rebels accidentally ambushed a police unit,
killing seven police officers and four civilian prisoners.
Investigators looked into all possibilities, including whether the
platoon, the police unit, or both, were involved in criminal activities
(AP, 3/21/04)(AP, 4/9/04)
2004 Mar 19, In southern Finland a
bus crashed into a truck in icy conditions, killing 24 people and
injuring 15.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 19, Georgia's authorities
lifted sanctions against the defiant Adzharia region, carrying out a
new agreement aimed to avert tensions.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 19, In Iraq a reporter
for Arab satellite television station Al-Arabiya died from his wounds
after U.S. soldiers shot him hours earlier along with a cameraman, who
died at the scene.
(AP, 3/19/04)(SFC, 3/30/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 19, A Mexican police raid
led to the arrests of 42 immigration agents and other government
employees accused of running a network that smuggled migrants into the
US.
(AP, 3/23/04)(SFC, 3/24/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 19, In Nicaragua police
officers kicked down the door and led convicted former Pres. Arnoldo
Aleman (58) from house arrest at his ranch to a special cell at a
federal prison. Aleman was sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined
$10 million for illegally diverting some $100 million in government
funds to his party's election campaigns during his tenure in office,
which ended in January 2002.
(AP, 3/20/04)
2004 Mar 19, Thousands of
Pakistani army reinforcements joined a major offensive in tribal border
villages where al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri and hundreds
of other militants are believed surrounded.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 19, A senior U.N.
official said that fighting in western Sudan has intensified in recent
weeks, accusing Arab militia of systematically attacking villages and
raping women.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 19, Taiwan President Chen
Shui-bian and his vice president were shot and slightly wounded in an
assassination attempt as they rode in an open vehicle while campaigning
a day before an election.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 19, Yemen security forces
captured the nation's most wanted man and another militant who escaped
from prison last year after being detained for the 2000 bombing of the
USS Cole. Jamal Badawi and Fahd al-Quso were arrested in the mountains
of southern Abyan province.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 20, The US military
charged 6 soldiers with abusing inmates at Abu Ghraib prison.
(AP, 3/20/05)
2004 Mar 20, The Rev. Karen
Dammann, a lesbian Methodist pastor, was acquitted of violating church
doctrine in a trial held in Bothell, Wash.
(AP, 3/20/05)
2004 Mar 20, A quickly spreading
Internet worm destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of personal
computers worldwide morning by exploiting a security flaw in a firewall
program designed to protect PCs from online threats. The "Witty" worm
wrote random data onto the hard drives of computers equipped with the
Black Ice and Real Secure Internet firewall products. It spread
automatically to vulnerable computers without any action on the part of
the user.
(WaP, 3/20/04)
2004 Mar 20, Thousands of
protesters marched in Australia to mark the first anniversary of the
Iraq war. Protests extended across Asia with some 30,000 marching in
Japan. Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide rallied against the
U.S.-led war in Iraq on the first anniversary of the start of the
conflict.
(AP, 3/20/04)
2004 Mar 20, The Economist
reported that a Goldman Sachs study found consumers in Australia and
Spain to be the most vulnerable, of 19 countries, to higher interest
rates or recession.
(Econ, 3/20/04, p.85)
2004 Mar 20, In Sao Goncalo,
Brazil, Carlos Leite and his companion, Maria da Penha, inaugurated a
free library in their home with some 100 volumes. By late 2005 the
collection had grew to 10,000 volumes and took up most of the space in
the home of the illiterate couple.
(AP, 10/2/05)
2004 Mar 20, In Guyana thousands
marched through Georgetown, demanding the government order an
independent investigation into claims of a state-sponsored hit squad
blamed for more than 40 killings in the past year.
(AP, 3/20/04)
2004 Mar 20, Hundreds of thousands
of people marched in Rome demanding that Italy pull its 2,600 troops
out of Iraq.
(AP, 3/21/04)
2004 Mar 20, In Kashmir a
remote-controlled bomb hidden in a motorbike exploded as an Indian army
convoy passed over a bridge, killing two soldiers and wounding 40
others.
(AP, 3/20/04)
2004 Mar 20, NATO-led forces
surrounded Kosovska Mitrovica in efforts to separate ethnic Albanians
and Serbs and prevent a resurgence of attacks that killed 28 people and
wounded 600. Ethnic Albanians looted villages and apartments abandoned
by Serb civilians. Some 110 homes and at least 16 Serb Orthodox
churches were destroyed by arson.
(AP, 3/20/04)(Econ, 9/11/04, p.47)
2004 Mar 20, Former Netherlands
Queen Juliana (94), who presided over the dismantling of the
centuries-old Dutch empire and witnessed the birth of a social
revolution during her 32-year reign (1948-1980, died.
(AP, 3/20/04)(SSFC, 3/21/04, p.B7)
2004 Mar 20, Nepalese government
forces killed as many as 500 rebels, and at least 18 police and
soldiers died in some of the fiercest fighting since a cease-fire
collapsed last year.
(AP, 3/21/04)
2004 Mar 20, The Pakistani
military commander leading a five-day assault on armed militants holed
up in mud fortresses said a "high-value" terror suspect remained
inside, possibly wounded, but there was no way to know whether it was
al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.
(AP, 3/20/04)
2004 Mar 20, The hunt for
terrorists on Pakistan's frontier appears to be narrowing on an Uzbek
terror group that once trained in Afghanistan.
(AP, 3/20/04)
2004 Mar 20, Taiwan Pres. Chen
Shui-bian narrowly won re-election, a day after being shot in an
assassination attempt, but a referendum he had championed on beefing up
defenses against China failed because not enough voters took part.
(AP, 3/20/04)(SSFC, 3/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 20, Uganda government
troops backed by helicopter gunships fought fierce battles with rebels
in northern Uganda, killing more than 50 insurgents.
(AP, 3/21/04)
2004 Mar 21, The White House
disputed assertions by President Bush's former counterterrorism
coordinator, Richard A. Clarke, that the administration had failed to
recognize the risk of an attack by al-Qaida in the months leading up to
Sept. 11. Clarke's assertions were contained in a new book, "Against
All Enemies," that went on sale the next day.
(AP, 3/21/05)
2004 Mar 21, Zaha Hadid (53), a
Baghdad-born designer, became the third Briton to win the Pritzker
Prize in Architecture, and the 1st woman to win the prize in its
25-year history.
(AP, 3/21/04)
2004 Mar 21, Robert Snyder (88),
documentary film maker and author, died. He was the son-in-law of
futurist Buckminster Fuller.
(SFC, 3/22/04, p.B4)
2004 Mar 21, Afghan aviation
minister Mirwais Sadiq was assassinated in the western city of Herat.
(AP, 3/21/04)
2004 Mar 21, Tony Saca, former
sportscaster and Arena Party candidate, easily won El Salvador's
presidential race, promising to continue the direction of one of the
most pro-U.S. governments in the hemisphere.
(AP, 3/22/04)(Econ, 3/27/04, p.38)
2004 Mar 21, French voters
delivered a rebuke to PM Jean-Pierre Raffarin's reform plans in the 1st
round of regional elections. The elections, held every six years, are
for regional leaders responsible for some infrastructure projects, job
training, school construction and other tasks.
(AP, 3/22/04)
2004 Mar 21, Ludmila Tcherina
(79), French ballerina and Oscar-winning actress, The Tales of Hoffman
(1950), died.
(AP, 3/22/04)
2004 Mar 21, In western Iraq
insurgents fired a rocket at U.S. troops, killing two soldiers, while
in Baghdad rockets fired toward the U.S.-led coalition headquarters
killed two Iraqi civilians and injured a U.S. soldier.
(AP, 3/21/04)
2004 Mar 21, Four Hamas militants
and a Palestinian woman were killed in fighting with Israeli troops,
the sixth day of Israel's new offensive in the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 3/21/04)
2004 Mar 21, Elections were held
in Malaysia. An Islamic leader implied that those who backed government
candidates would go to hell. Malaysia's secular government won a
sweeping victory in two Muslim-dominated states and looked headed for a
nationwide rout of the fundamentalist Islamic opposition.
(WSJ, 3/8/04, p.A1)(AP, 3/21/04)
2004 Mar 21, Pakistani forces
agreed to allow a 25-member tribal council free passage into a battle
zone in an effort to negotiate a peace deal with local elders
sheltering hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters. Up to 6,000 Pakistani forces
were engaged with some 500 foreign militants, in the Wana area of South
Waziristan. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) was suspected to
be involved.
(AP, 3/21/04)(SFC, 3/22/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 21, In the Republic of
Congo a train derailed 90 miles south of Brazzaville, killing 31 people
and injuring scores of others.
(AP, 3/23/04)
2004 Mar 21, Spain's incoming
Socialist government rejected an offer for dialogue from the Basque
separatist group ETA.
(AP, 3/21/04)
2004 Mar 22, Terry Nichols went on
trial for his life in the Oklahoma City bombing. Nichols was already
serving a life sentence for his conviction on federal charges. On May
26 he was found guilty of 161 state murder charges, but was again
spared the death penalty when the jury couldn't agree on his sentence.
(AP, 3/22/05)
2004 Mar 22, Afghan soldiers
deployed to the western city of Herat after some of the fiercest
factional fighting since the 2001 fall of the Taliban killed a Cabinet
minister and as many as 100 others.
(AP, 3/22/04)
2004 Mar 22, A car bomb blew up
near a U.S. Air Force base north of Baghdad, killing two Iraqi
civilians and wounding 25 others. The U.S. military said a bomb killed
a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter in Baghdad.
(AP, 3/22/04)
2004 Mar 22, The Finnish Foreign
Ministry said two Finnish businessmen were shot and killed in Baghdad.
(AP, 3/22/04)
2004 Mar 22, Israel killed Hamas
founder Ahmed Yassin and 7 other Hamas members in a helicopter missile
strike outside a Gaza City mosque, prompting threats of unprecedented
revenge by thousands of Palestinian. Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a quadriplegic
preacher, founded the Islamic militant group Hamas in 1987 and presided
over its rise to a violent, radical alternative to Yasser Arafat's
Palestinian Authority.
(AP, 3/22/04)(USAT, 3/23/04, p.1A)
2004 Mar 22, In Malaysia Abdullah
Ahmad Badawi was sworn in as prime minister, a day after scoring a
landslide election victory that handed the fundamentalist Islamic
opposition its worst defeat in more than a decade. The national Front
Coalition won 199 out of 219 seats in parliament.
(AP, 3/22/04)(Econ, 11/17/07, p.53)
2004 Mar 22, Oil giant Royal
Dutch/Shell said it plans to streamline its operations in Nigeria. An
estimated 1,500 people, or about 30 percent of its work force of about
5,000, will be laid off.
(AP, 3/22/04)
2004 Mar 22, In Pakistan
assailants launched two rocket attacks on government forces on the edge
of a bloody offensive against al-Qaeda militants and 15 soldiers were
killed near Sarwakai. A mile-long tunnel from a tribal compound toward
the Afghan border was discovered.
(AP, 3/23/04)(WSJ, 3/23/04, p.A1)(SFC, 4/2/04, p.A11)
2004 Mar 23, The Bush
administration reported that the Medicare Trust Fund would run out of
money in 2019, 7 years earlier that projected in 2003.
(SFC, 3/24/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 23, Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell offered a strong
defense of the administration's pre-Sept. 11 actions as they testified
before a federal commission reviewing the 2001 attacks.
(AP, 3/23/05)
2004 Mar 23, The US Coast Guard
said it had seized over 14.5 tons of cocaine from 3 fishing boats off
Mexico and Ecuador over the last 2 months.
(SFC, 3/24/04, p.B3)
2004 Mar 23, Random House
published "Trump: How To Get Rich," by Donald Trump.
(WSJ, 3/22/04, p.B1)
2004 Mar 23, The Rev. Sun Myung
Moon declared himself the Messiah during a ceremony at the Dirksen
Building in Wash., DC. Over a dozen US lawmakers attended the reception.
(SFC, 6/24/04, p.A2)
2004 Mar 23, A Unocal helicopter
with 10 on board went missing in the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard
found 4 bodies.
(WSJ, 3/25/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 23, Joseph Iadone
(b.1914), master lute player, died in Connecticut. His few CDs were all
on the Lyrichord label (www.lyrichord.com).
(WSJ, 4/27/04, p.D10)
2004 Mar 23, Chen Zhongwei (74), a
Chinese surgeon credited with pioneering the process of reattaching
severed limbs, died. Chen successfully reattached the severed right
hand of an injured factory worker in 1963, in the first operation of
its kind.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 23, In Iraq gunmen opened
fire on a van filled with police recruits south of Baghdad, killing
nine. Other assailants shot and killed two policemen, twin brothers,
north of the capital.
(AP, 3/23/04)
2004 Mar 23, Israel threatened the
entire Hamas leadership with death as Abdel Aziz Rantisi took command
of the group in Gaza.
(WSJ, 3/24/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 23, Israeli helicopter
gunships fired on gunmen in southern Lebanon, killing two and wounding
one.
(AP, 3/23/04)
2004 Mar 23, A chamber of
Venezuela's Supreme Court dealt a blow to opponents of President Hugo
Chavez by overruling fellow justices on a petition for recalling him
from office.
(AP, 3/23/04)
2004 Mar 24, Former top terrorism
adviser Richard Clarke, testifying before the federal 9-11 Commission,
accused the Bush administration of scaling back the campaign against
Osama bin Laden before the attacks and undermining the fight against
terrorism by invading Iraq.
(AP, 3/24/05)
2004 Mar 24, The Bush
administration, under pressure from farmers, petitioned to postpone the
global phase-out of methyl bromide, a pesticide that has been shown to
destroy ozone.
(SFC, 3/24/04, p.A5)
2004 Mar 24, World TB Day. TB
killed and estimated 2-3 million people per year.
(SFC, 3/24/04, p.B9)
2004 Mar 24, A group of large
employers proposed "scorecards" for doctors in an effort help employees
choose doctors based on quality care.
(WSJ, 3/25/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 24, A NASA unpiloted
X-43A jet, part of its Hyper-X program, reached a record speed of 5,200
mph, Mach 6.83, after a rocket boosted it to 3,500 mph. It used a new
engine called a supersonic-combustion ramjet, or scramjet.
(SSFC, 3/28/04, p.A3)(Econ, 3/27/04, p.80)(SFC,
11/10/04, p.A2)
2004 Mar 24, EU regulators slapped
a $613 million anti-trust fine against Microsoft.
(WSJ, 3/23/04, p.A3)(SFC, 3/25/04, p.C1)
2004 Mar 24, Antigua PM Lester
Bird (66) conceded defeat to labor activist Baldwin Spencer in general
elections marked by corruption charges, ending a family dynasty that
has dominated Antigua and Barbuda for more than half a century. Spencer
soon found the coffers empty.
(AP, 3/24/04)(Econ, 12/4/04, p.38)
2004 Mar 24, Argentine Pres.
Nestor Kirchner rallied thousands of supporters on the grounds of a
Dirty War torture camp, announcing it would become a memorial to
victims of the past dictatorship. The "Museum of Memory" on the grounds
of the Navy School of Mechanics, the most infamous detention center of
the 1976-83 military dictatorship, marked a new step toward reconciling
the legacy of the repression.
(AP, 3/25/04)
2004 Mar 24, Axel Blumberg (23),
the kidnapped son of businessman Juan Carlos Blumberg, was murdered
following an attempt to escape. This prompted his father to initiate a
high-profile public campaign against impunity for violent crimes.
(Econ, 9/9/06,
p.39)(www.answers.com/topic/2004-in-argentina)
2004 Mar 24, Australia's
parliament passed a law making the Great Barrier Reef the most
protected reef system on earth. A fishing ban on a third of the World
Heritage site would begin in July.
(AP, 3/24/04)
2004 Mar 24, In Colombia warplanes
preparing to bomb a paramilitary camp abandoned their mission after
members of the outlawed Central Bolivar Bloc (BCB) used villagers as
human shields. A soldier and 14 paramilitary gunmen were killed in
subsequent firefights.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2004 Mar 24, In India's northeast
Assam state heavily armed separatist militants killed 21 villagers from
a rival ethnic group in three attacks.
(AP, 3/24/04)
2004 Mar 24, In Iraq a gun battle
with insurgents killed one American soldier and three rebels.
(AP, 3/25/04)
2004 Mar 24, Insurgents bombed an
oil well in northern Iraq, sparking a fire that raged for 24 hours
before being extinguished.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2004 Mar 24, In the Ivory Coast
about a dozen people were killed during a massive protest march.
(AP, 3/25/04)
2004 Mar 25, US Congress passed
the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, making it a separate offense to
harm a fetus during violent federal crime.
(AP, 3/25/05)
2004 Mar 25, The US used its veto
power to quash a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel for
killing Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin in a missile strike.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2004 Mar 25, Howard Dean endorsed
John Kerry as the Democratic presidential candidate.
(WSJ, 11/3/04, p.A6)
2004 Mar 25, British PM Tony Blair
and Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi greeted each other with smiles
and handshakes in a meeting that marked a major step back into the
international mainstream for the North African state.
(AP, 3/25/04)
2004 Mar 25, A military truck
drove out of a Russian military base in Chechnya after curfew and hit a
mine planted outside to deter a rebel attack, killing 10 soldiers.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2004 Mar 25, China's Foreign
Minister Li Zhaoxing, arriving home from North Korea, saying his
three-day trip yielded an agreement from that country's reclusive
leader to "push forward" toward a third round of talks on its nuclear
program.
(AP, 3/25/04)
2004 Mar 25, In Colombia attackers
shot and killed three retired police officers, at least two of whom
were suspected of having links to drug traffickers.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2004 Mar 25, The Olympic torch was
lit in Ilida, Greece, and began its journey to herald the summer
Olympiad, Aug 13-29. A 6-continent tour was planned using 2 747s named
Zeus and Hera with a bill of $50 million.
(AP, 3/26/04)(WSJ, 7/19/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 25, An Indian court
sentenced four Pakistanis to death for "waging war" against India after
they were caught smuggling the deadly explosive RDX into the country in
1999.
(AP, 3/25/04)
2004 Mar 25, A U.S. soldier died
in a bombing north of Baghdad amid warnings that attacks will likely
increase with fewer than 100 days left before the coalition hands over
sovereignty.
(AP, 3/25/04)
2004 Mar 25, Rebels and the main
opposition party, Rally of Republicans, withdrew from Ivory Coast's
power-sharing government after security forces in Abidjan fired on
protesters demanding implementation of a peace deal. At least 25 people
were killed.
(AP, 3/25/04)(SFC, 3/26/04, p.A2)(SFC, 3/27/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 25, A Norwegian Academy
awarded the Abel Prize in Mathematics to Isadore M. Singer of MIT and
Sir Michael F. Atiyah of the Univ. of Edinburgh for discovering and
proving the mathematical concept called the "index theorem."
(SFC, 3/26/04, p.A15)
2004 Mar 25, Armed Palestinians in
wetsuits and flippers emerged from the Mediterranean and fired toward a
beachfront Israeli settlement of Tel Katifa in Gaza. Two attackers were
killed and a third was wounded and fled.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2004 Mar 25, In eastern Turkey a
5.1 earthquake centered at Cat left at least 9 people dead.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2004 Mar 26, The FDA approved the
1st HIV test that uses saliva rather than blood. The 20 minute test,
made by OraSure, is able to detect HIV antibodies about 6 weeks after
infection.
(SFC, 3/27/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 26, Phoenix Bishop Thomas
O'Brien was sentenced to four years' probation and 1,000 hours of
community service for a deadly hit-and-run that claimed the life of
pedestrian Jim Reed.
(AP, 3/26/05)
2004 Mar 26, Jan Berry (62),
pioneering California rock musician, died in LA. He rode the wave of
the surf music trend in the 1960s as one half of the popular duo Jan
& Dean.
(Reuters, 3/28/04)
2004 Mar 26, Jan Sterling (82),
Hollywood film actress, died.
(SFC, 3/30/04, p.B6)
2004 Mar 26, West of Baghdad, U.S.
Marines and gunmen fought an hour-long battle that left four Iraqis
dead and six wounded. A U.S. Marine and an ABC freelance cameraman were
killed during a bitter, hours-long firefight between American troops
and Iraqi insurgents in the city of Fallujah, while 18 people died in
violence elsewhere across Iraq.
(AP, 3/26/04)(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 26, A Palestinian
militant was killed when an explosion went off in a van he was driving
in a West Bank refugee camp.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2004 Mar 26, The bodies of 8
Pakistani soldiers, executed by Al Qaeda-linked militants, were found
near Wana. They had been taken hostage in fighting near the Afghan
border.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 26, Polish PM Leszek
Miller announced he will step down the day after Poland joins the
European Union on May 1, taking the blame for his government's collapse
in popularity and raising the prospect of early elections. 22 members
of Miller’s SLD party had left to form the new left-wing Polish social
Democracy as Miller’s popularity plummeted.
(AP, 3/26/04)(Econ, 4/3/04, p.56)
2004 Mar 26, A Moscow court banned
the religious activities of Jehovah's Witnesses from the Russian
capital in a move that critics called a step back for democracy and
religious freedom. A 1997 religion law enshrines Orthodox Christianity
as the country's predominant religion and pledges respect for Buddhism,
Islam and Judaism, but places restrictions on other groups.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, Adan Sanchez (19),
Mexican-American singer, died in a car crash in Sinaloa, Mexico. He was
the son of narco-ballad singer Chalino Sanchez, murdered in 1992.
(WSJ, 4/9/04, p.B1)
2004 Mar 27, Robert Merle (95),
French author, died. His books included "The Day of the Dolphin," which
was made into a 1973 film.
(SFC, 4/1/04, p.B7)
2004 Mar 27, Edward J. Piszek
(87), founder of Mrs. Paul's Kitchens, died in Fort Washington, Pa.
(SFC, 4/1/04, p.B7)
2004 Mar 27, The 15-nation
Caribbean Community withheld recognition from Haiti's U.S.-backed
interim government as leaders closed a summit renewing calls for a U.N.
investigation into the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, Tens of thousands of
security forces guarded voting stations as Nigerians cast ballots in
tense municipal elections.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, A 7-year-old
Palestinian boy was killed by what the Israeli military said was
haphazard Palestinian gunfire toward an army jeep in a West Bank
refugee camp.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, Rwanda reported plans
to release at least 30,000 suspects who have confessed to participating
in the 1994 genocide, letting them be tried in community courts rather
than by the country's overburdened judicial system.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, A half million people
swarmed into Taiwan's capital to protest the disputed presidential
election.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 28, Art James (74), TV
game show host died in Palm Springs, Calif.
(AP, 3/28/05)
2004 Mar 28, Sir Peter Ustinov (b.
Apr 16, 1921), a brilliant wit and mimic who won two Oscars for an
acting career that ranged from the evil Nero in "Quo Vadis" to the
quirky Agatha Christie detective Hercule Poirot, died at age 82 in
Switzerland.
(AP, 3/29/04)
2004 Mar 28, A powerful storm,
dubbed Catarina, lashed Brazil's southern coast, damaging thousands of
homes, killing two people.
(AP, 3/29/04)
2004 Mar 28, In Kinshasa, Congo,
government forces battled attackers at military installations and
television headquarters. Diplomats called it a coup attempt against
Pres. Joseph Kabila.
(AP, 3/28/04)
2004 Mar 28, France's left-wing
opposition bulldozed its way across the country in second-round midterm
regional elections, putting pressure on President Jacques Chirac to
revamp his Cabinet and perhaps even ditch his prime minister due to
widely unpopular economic reforms and rising unemployment.
(AP, 3/28/04)(AP, 3/29/04)
2004 Mar 28, Georgians voted in
the country's third election in less than six months. Supporters of
President Mikhail Saakashvili swept to victory in Georgia's
parliamentary election, according to early results.
(AP, 3/28/04)(AP, 3/29/04)
2004 Mar 28, Guadeloupe's leader
conceded defeat in regional elections that pushed her conservative
party out of power for the first time in 12 years, a loss seen as
public backlash toward moves to win greater autonomy from Paris.
(AP, 3/29/04)
2004 Mar 28, In Iraq US soldiers
in the northern city of Mosul shot and killed four rebels suspected of
involvement in attacks in the region. Gunmen in Mosul killed 2 British
and Canadian electrical engineers. Coalition forces closed Shiite
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's newspaper, claiming it incited anti-US
violence.
(AP, 3/29/04)(WSJ, 4/1/04, p.A10)(WSJ, 4/19/04,
p.A14)
2004 Mar 28, Israel's state
attorney officially recommended that PM Ariel Sharon be indicted for
bribe-taking.
(AP, 3/28/04)
2004 Mar 28, The Thailand
government said violence in the Muslim-dominated south was at a
"crucial stage" and pledged tougher measures, after a bombing in the
region injured 29 people, including 10 Malaysian tourists.
(AP, 3/28/04)
2004 Mar 28, Premier Recep Tayyip
Erdogan's Islamic-rooted party appeared headed for a resounding victory
in Turkey's local elections.
(AP, 3/28/04)
2004 Mar 28, Clashes between
supporters of Zimbabwe's ruling party and the opposition killed one
person and wounded at least 11 during the second day of polling in a
parliamentary by-election.
(AP, 3/29/04)
2004 Mar 28-2004 Mar 29, In
Uzbekistan 2 suicide bombings, attacks on police and an explosion at an
terrorist bomb-making factory in Kakhramon killed 19 people and injured
26. The explosion led to 4 days of violence that left at least 47
people dead in including 33 militants.
(AP, 3/29/04)(SSFC, 4/4/04, p.A22)
2004 Mar 29, Pres. Bush hosted a
White House ceremony to welcome Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia,
Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia into the NATO alliance.
(WSJ, 3/30/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 29, Massachusetts
lawmakers approved a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay
marriage and legalize civil unions, sending the issue to the next
legislative session.
(AP, 3/29/05)
2004 Mar 29, The body of Eugen
Gorenman (26), immigrant Russian Jew, was found shot to death at Fort
Funston, SF, Ca. In 2009 3 women, teenagers at time, were sentenced to
prison terms of 8 to 21 years for the slaying.
(SFCM, 6/27/04, p.8)(SFC, 4/4/09, p.B3)
2004 Mar 29, Margaret McCord Nixon
(87), South-African-born author of "The Calling of Katie Makanya"
(1997), died in Venice, Ca.
(SFC, 4/13/04, p.B7)
2004 Mar 29, The island of
Dominica switched diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China, after the
communist state offered a $112 million aid package.
(AP, 3/29/04)
2004 Mar 29, Ireland outlawed
smoking in workplaces, imposing the strictest anti-tobacco measure ever
adopted by any country on earth.
(AP, 3/29/04)
2004 Mar 29, A Lithuanian court
found French rock star Bertrand Cantat (40) guilty of man-slaughter for
the 2003 beating death of his movie-star girlfriend, Marie Trintignant
(41), and sentenced him to 8 years in prison.
(AP, 3/29/04)
2004 Mar 29, In Mexico Pres. Fox
unveiled a sweeping revision of the legal system.
(WSJ, 3/30/04, p.A16)
2004 Mar 29, In a stinging rebuke,
Secretary-General Kofi Annan fired one top UN official and demoted
another for security failures leading to the Aug. 19 bombing of the
U.N.’s Baghdad headquarters that killed 22 people.
(AP, 3/29/05)
2004 Mar 29, In Uzbekistan at
least 19 people were killed in a wave of terrorist violence. [see Mar
28]
(AP, 3/29/05)
2004 Mar 30, President Bush agreed
to do what he had insisted for weeks he would not: allow National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly and under oath
before an independent panel investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks.
(AP, 3/30/04)
2004 Mar 30, AT&T officially
began to offer phone calls via the Internet (VOIP) in 2 state, New
Jersey and Texas.
(WSJ, 3/30/04, p.B1)
2004 Mar 30, Alistair Cooke
(b.1908), television host and author, died in NYC at age 95. His books
included "Alistair Cooke's America" (1972).
(Econ, 4/3/04, p.89)
2004 Mar 30, In Bolivia an angry
miner with dynamite strapped to his chest blew himself up inside
Congress, also killing two police officers.
(AP, 3/30/04)
2004 Mar 30, British police raids
in London led to the arrest of 8 men and the seizure of half a ton of
ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer compound used in the Oklahoma City
bombing.
(AP, 3/30/04)
2004 Mar 30, Cuba arrested Carlos
Ahumada, a Mexican businessman, wanted in Mexico for his role in a
graft scandal involving Mexico City Mayor Manuel Lopez Obrador. Ahumada
was soon deported to Mexico.
(WSJ, 4/29/04, p.A14)
2004 Mar 30, French PM Jean-Pierre
Raffarin was spared the ax despite a massive local election defeat, but
ordered to form a new government to push ahead with unpopular social
and economic reforms.
(AP, 3/30/04)
2004 Mar 30, In Iraq a suicide
bombing outside the house of a police chief killed the attacker and
wounded seven others. Elsewhere, a U.S. soldier died in a bomb blast,
and Spanish soldiers and Iraqi police quelled a riot by jobseekers.
(AP, 3/30/04)
2004 Mar 30, Myanmar's military
government said it will take the first step on a self-proclaimed "road
to democracy" by reconvening a constitutional convention that was
suspended eight years ago.
(AP, 3/30/04)
2004 Mar 30, Philippine officials
reported the arrest of 4 Muslim extremists in the brutal
al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group. They were found with a stash of TNT
targeted for terror attacks on trains and shopping malls in the
Philippine capital. A suspected Muslim extremist told police
interrogators he planted TNT in a television set on a ferry that caught
fire last month, killing more than 100 people.
(AP, 3/30/04)
2004 Mar 30, Serbian lawmakers
awarded salaries, legal fees and other financial perks to former
President Slobodan Milosevic and fellow Serbian war crimes suspects
being tried by a U.N. tribunal in the Netherlands.
(AP, 3/30/04)
2004 Mar 30, A boat carrying 107
people sank during the crossing from Somalia to Yemen and only four
other people, including two crew members, were rescued.
(AP, 3/30/04)
2004 Mar 30, In Sri Lanka gunmen
stormed the home of a Tamil parliamentary candidate who was allied to a
renegade rebel leader, killing the candidate and one of his relatives.
(AP, 3/30/04)
2004 Mar 30, In Uzbekistan gunfire
and explosions resounded in Tashkent as government forces battled for
hours with suspected Islamic militants after two more suicide attacks.
Officials claimed 20 terrorists and three police died in the fighting.
(AP, 3/30/04)
2004 Mar 31, Air America Radio
went live in 3 of largest US markets with a left-leaning,
round-the-clock, talk format featuring Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo.
Air America was conceived by Anita and Sheldon Drobny of Chicago. The
idea was purchased by Guam entrepreneurs Evan M. Cohen and Rex
Sorensen, who resigned May 5.
(SFC, 3/31/04, p.C1)(WSJ, 6/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 31, The US Navy closed
Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, its last base in Puerto Rico. It was
transferred to a special naval agency that will coordinate the closing
process. The base had been used for 6 decades to keep watch over the
Caribbean.
(AP, 1/6/04)(AP, 4/2/04)
2004 Mar 31, In Fallujah, Iraq,
jubilant residents dragged the charred corpses of 4 American private
security guards, from Blackwater Security Consulting, through the
streets and hanged them from a bridge spanning the Euphrates River. 5
American soldiers died in a roadside bombing nearby.
(AP, 3/31/04)(SFC, 4/1/04, p.A1)(SFC, 4/2/04, p.A16)
2004 Mar 31, Lithuania's highest
court ruled that President Rolandas Paksas violated the constitution by
arranging citizenship for a businessman with alleged mob ties, a
verdict that will likely set the stage for an impeachment vote.
(AP, 3/31/04)
2004 Mar 31, The International
Court of Justice ruled that the United States violated the rights of 51
Mexicans on death row and ordered their cases be reviewed.
(AP, 3/31/04)
2004 Mar 31, OPEC voted to cut oil
production by 4.1%.
(SFC, 4/1/04, p.C1)
2004 Mar 31, The US suspended $26
million in aid to Serbia for refusal to give up war crimes fugitives.
(WSJ, 4/1/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 31, In Sudan security
police detained Hassan Turabi, the leading Islamic opposition leader, 3
days after members of his party were accused of conspiring to topple
the government.
(AP, 3/31/04)
2004 Mar, Jamie Olis, former
tax-planning executive at Dynegy, was sentenced to 24 years in jail for
his role in Project Alpha, an accounting fraud that inflated the Texas
energy company’s cashflow by $300 million. In 2005 an appeals court
upheld the conviction, but threw out the sentence.
(Econ, 11/5/05, p.68)
2004 Mar, The EPA and FDA issued a
joint advisory that cited high mercury levels in tuna and urged limits
on consumption by children and some women.
(WSJ, 8/1/05, p.A1)
2004 Mar, In Japan $31.5 million
worth of jewels from an upscale shop in Tokyo were stolen. The jewels
have never been found. On Dec 18, 2009, three Serb members of the
infamous "Pink Panther" ring of thieves were convicted in Belgrade of
Japan's biggest-ever jewel heist, which nabbed treasures including a
$27-million (euro19-million) diamond necklace. Dorothy Fasola, a
British national, was also named in Japanese police papers as one of
the masterminds behind the robbery.
(AP, 12/18/09)(http://tinyurl.com/yfhxvxz)
2004 Mar, Indonesia became a net
importer of crude oil for the first time.
(WSJ, 5/18/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar, The US Army Corps of
Engineers awarded a $40 million contract to global construction and
engineering firm Parsons to design and build an 1,800-inmate lockup in
Iraq to include educational and vocational facilities. Work was set to
begin May 2004 and finish November 2005. The US government pulled the
plug in June 2006, citing "continued schedule slips and ... massive
cost overruns." Parsons got $31 million and the other contractors got
$9 million. As of 2008 it was unused with much of the construction
deemed substandard.
(AP, 7/28/08)
2004 Mar, In Peru Miguel Toledo, a
nephew of Pres. Toledo, and three other men luring a 22-year-old woman
to a restaurant to discuss a job offer. Instead, they allegedly drugged
her and took her to a hotel where she was raped. Miguel Toledo fled his
Nov, 2005, rape trial, but was arrested in 2006 and given a 4-year
suspended sentence and a fine of $2,500.
(AP, 2/20/06)(AP, 2/22/06)
2004 Mar, KIA Motors, a unit of
South Korea’s Hyundai group, decided to build a new $850 million plant
in Slovakia, where corporate and personal taxes were recently cut to a
flat 19%.
(Econ, 3/6/04, p.60)
2004 Mar, Somalia’s 1st Coca-Cola
bottling plant opened in Mogadishu.
(Econ, 4/3/04, p.50)
2004 Mar-2004 Apr, US forces in
Baghdad detained Pakistani national Dilshad Ahmad. He had served as a
commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba between 1997 and 2001.
(WSJ, 12/8/08, p.A6)
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