Today in History - January 17
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St. Anthony's day.
(Hem., 3/97, p.74)
395 Jan 17,
Emperor Theodosius I (49), the Great, Spanish head of Rome, died.
Theodosius I wrote into his will that upon his death the eastern and
western sections of the empire should be declared separate empires. His
death in this year marks the split of the Roman and Byzantine Empire.
(ATC, p.24)(MC, 1/17/02)
1504 Jan 17, Pius V, Pope from
1566-1572, was born.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1562 Jan 17, French Protestant
Huguenots were recognized under the Edict of St. Germain.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1601 Jan 17, The Treaty of Lyons
ended a short war between France and Savoy. Savoy was ceded to France
in 1860.
(WUD, 1994, p.1272)(HN, 1/17/99)
1656 Jan 17, Prussian Duke
Frederick Wilhelm withdrew ties with Lithuania and Poland and
acknowledged vassal status with Sweden.
(LHC, 1/17/03)
1702 Jan 17, Thomas Franklin,
English smith and uncle of B. Franklin, died.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1705 Jan 17, John Ray (b.1627),
British naturalist and theologian, died. He had spent three years
traveling in Europe collecting material for his book “Historia
Plantarum.” The classification in his 1682 book “Methodus Plantarum
Nova” is based on overall morphology. Ray's plant classification system
was the first to divide flowering plants into monocots and dicots.
(www.1911encyclopedia.org/John_Ray)(WSJ, 5/10/08,
p.W8)
1706 Jan 17, Benjamin Franklin
(d.1790), American statesman, was born in Boston, the youngest boy in a
family of 17 children. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence
and wrote "Poor Richard’s Almanac." Carl Van Doren portrays Franklin as
a harmonious rationalist in his classic biography. David Morgan writes
of Franklin’s darker side in: “The Devious Dr. Franklin, Colonial
Agent.” And Robert Middlekauff describes Franklin as a trickster in
his: “Benjamin Franklin and his Enemies.” Franklin believed in white
superiority and said: “why increase the Sons of Africa by planting them
in America, when we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all the
Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely white.?” "If you would not
be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things
worth reading, or do things worth the writing."
(WSJ, 8/8/95, p. A12)(SFC,12/897, p.A27)(AP,
1/17/98)(AP, 4/17/98)(HN, 1/17/99)(HNQ, 11/19/01)
1732 Jan 17, Stanislaw II August
Poniatowski, last king of Poland (1764-95), was born.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1746 Jan 17, Charles Edward
Stuart, the young pretender, defeated the government forces at the
battle of Falkirk in Scotland.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1773 Jan 17, Captain James Cook
became the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle (66d 33'
S).
(HN, 1/17/99)(MC, 1/17/02)
1775 Jan 17, 9 old women were
burned as witches for causing bad harvests in Kalisk, Poland.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1781 Jan 17, Daniel Morgan’s
Continental regiments routed British forces at Cowpens, South Carolina.
Some 100 British soldiers were killed, 299 wounded and 600 taken
prisoner. 12 American were killed.
(ON, 12/01, p.10)(AH, 2/06, p.71)
1806 Jan 17, James Madison
Randolph, Thomas Jefferson's grandson, was the 1st to be born in White
House. His mother was Martha Randolph one of President Thomas
Jefferson's two daughters, this was her 8th child.
(AP, 1/17/06)
1819 Jan 17, Simon Bolivar the
“liberator” proclaimed Columbia a republic.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1835 Jan 17, Antanas Baranauskas
(d.1902), Lithuanian poet and bishop, was born in Anyksciai.
(LC, 1998, p.8)(LHC, 1/17/03)
1852 Jan 17, At the Sand River
Convention, the British recognized the independence of the Transvaal
Board.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1860 Jan 17, Anton Chekhov
(d.1904), Russian playwright and short story writer, was born. He was
famous for "The Seagull" and "Three Sisters. " Part of his letters were
published in a 1955 edition edited by Lillian Hellman. In 1997 his
later letters from 1899 to actress Olga Knipper were edited by Jean
Benedetti and published as: “Dear Writer, Dear Actress: The Love
Letters of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper.”
(WUD, 1994, p.252)(WSJ, 12/5/97, p.A16)(HN, 1/17/99)
1863 Jan 17, David Lloyd George
(d.1945), British Prime Minister, was born. First Earl Lloyd-George of
Dwyfor, English statesman: “It is always too late, or too little, or
both. And that is the road to disaster.”
(AP, 8/13/97)(HN, 1/17/99)
1865 Jan 17, The 170-foot sailing
ship Sir John Franklin, a clipper out of Baltimore with 16 people
aboard, wrecked near Pescadero, Ca. Capt. Desperaux and 11 crew members
were lost.
(SFC, 8/10/02, p.A13)(Ind, 8/10/02, 5A)
1871 Jan 17, The 1st cable car
patented by Andrew S. Hallidie. It began service in 1873.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1874 Jan 17, Chang and Eng Bunker
(62), Chinese-Thai Siamese twins, died.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1893 Jan 17, Hawaii's monarchy was
overthrown by a group of businessmen and sugar planters under Sanford
Ballard Dole, who forced Queen Lili’uokalani to abdicate and formed the
Republic of Hawaii. This coup occurred with the knowledge of John L.
Stevens, the US Minister to Hawaii. 300 Marines from the USS Boston
were called to Hawaii, allegedly to protect American lives. Queen
Lili’uokalani wrote to Pres. Harrison for support.
(AP, 1/17/98)(HNPD, 1/25/99)(SFEC, 8/29/99,
p.T11)(ON, 11/02, p.6)
1893 Jan 17, A state record
temperature of 17F, -27C, was recorded in Millsboro, Delaware.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1893 Jan 17, The 19th president of
the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881), died in Fremont,
Ohio, at age 70.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1899 Jan 17, Notorious gangster Al
Capone was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. The U.S. mobster known as “Scarface
Al” later ran most of Chicago and the surrounding area.
(AP, 1/17/99)(HN, 1/17/99)
1899 Jan 17, US took possession of
Wake Island in Pacific.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1902 Jan 17, Gideon Scheepers,
South Africa Boer leader, was executed.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1911 Jan 17, Francis Galton
(b.1822), English scientist, died. He was one of the first moderns to
present a carefully considered eugenics program. His work included the
invention of weather maps and the description of fingerprints. He also
developed a system for classifying human profiles using geometric
diagrams. He was a cousin of Charles Darwin and the founder of the
science of statistics. The idea of sterilizing human beings considered
as physical or mental undesirables stemmed from Galton’s ideas.
(NH, 6/97, p.18)(SFC, 8/28/97,
p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton)
1917 Jan 17, The United States
paid Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.
(AP, 1/17/07)
1919 Jan 17, Pianist and statesman
Ignace Jan Paderewski became the first premier of the newly created
republic of Poland.
(AP, 1/17/07)
1922 Jan 17, Betty White, actress
(Mary Tyler Moore Show, Golden Girls), was born.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1922 Jan 17, Luis Echeverria
Alvarez, president Mexico, was born.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1926 Jan 17, George Burns married
Gracie Allen.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1927 Jan 17, Eartha Kitt, singer,
actress (Catwoman-Batman), was born.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1928 Jan 17, Vidal Sassoon, hair
stylist/CEO (Vidal Sassoon), was born in London.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1929 Jan 17, The first Popeye
character appeared in the Thimble Theater cartoon strip by Elzie
Segar (1894-1938) of Chesater, Ill.
(WSJ, 10/15/96,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.C._Segar)
1931 Jan 17, James Earl Jones,
actor (Darth Vader, Exorcist II, Soul Man), was born in Miss.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1934 Jan 17, Shari Lewis,
ventriloquist, puppeteer (Lamb Chop), was born in Bronx, NY.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1939 Jan 17, The Reich issued an
order forbidding Jews to practice as dentists, veterinarians and
chemists.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1942 Jan 17, Muhammad Ali [Casius
Clay], U.S. boxer, “The Greatest,” who is the only three-time
heavyweight champion, was born.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1943 Jan 17, US Tin Can Drive Day.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1944 Jan 17, Russia rejected a
Polish proposal to negotiate a boundary dispute.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1945 Jan 17, Soviet and Polish
forces liberated Warsaw during World War II.
(AP, 1/17/98)(HN, 1/17/99)
1945 Jan 17, Swedish diplomat
Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews,
disappeared in Hungary while in Soviet custody. Raoul Wallenberg was
jailed by the Soviets who believed that he was an American spy. He had
saved more than 20,000 Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps. Wallenberg
was a graduate of the Univ. of Michigan and studied there from
1931-1935. In 2000 a Kremlin commission believed that he was shot in a
KGB prison.
(SFC, 5/5/96, p.A-7)(AP, 1/17/98)(MT, Spg. ‘99,
p.18)(SFC, 11/28/00, p.A18)
1946 Jan 17, The United Nations
Security Council held its first meeting.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1949 Jan 17, Andy Kaufman,
comedian, actor (Latka Gravas-Taxi), was born in NYC.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1950 Jan 17, In Boston 11 men
robbed the Brink's office of $1.2M cash & $1.5M securities. The
1978 film "The Brink’s Job" starred Peter Falk and Peter Boyle. It was
based on the nonfiction book "The Big Stick-Up at Brink’s" by Noel Behn.
(SFC, 8/1/98,
p.A19)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Brinks_Robbery)
1951 Jan 17, China refused a
cease-fire in Korea.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1953 Jan 17, GM introduced the
first American sports car, the two-seater Corvette at the annual NYC
Motorama Show at the Waldorf-Astoria. It was not made available for
sale to the public until June 30th.
(http://tinyurl.com/fdjur)(http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1953-corvette.htm)
1953 Jan 17, In Egypt all
political parties were dissolved and banned.
(http://countrystudies.us/egypt/32.htm)
1955 Jan 17, The nuclear powered
USS Nautilus submarine was launched for its 1st shakedown cruise to
Puerto Rico. [see Jan 21, 1954]
(SFC, 4/30/01, p.A17)
1957 Jan 17, A 9-county commission
recommended the creation of BART, the SF Bay Area Rapid Transport
system.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1961 Jan 17, In his farewell
address, President Eisenhower warned against the rise of "the
military-industrial complex."
(AP, 1/17/98)
1961 Jan 17, Patrice Lumumba (34),
the 1st premier Congo, was murdered after 67 days in office. Pres.
Eisenhower allegedly approved the assassination of Congo's Patrice
Lumumba. The US and Joseph Mobutu were implicated but no conclusive
proof has emerged. Sidney Gottlieb (d.1999 at 80), a CIA deputy,
carried a deadly bacteria to the Congo that was used to kill Lamumba.
In 2000 the Belgium Parliament opened an inquiry into possible
government involvement in the killing of Congo’s Premier Patrice
Lumumba. This followed allegations in the new book "The Murder of
Lumumba" by Ludo De Witte. In 2001 the inquiry found that King Baudouin
knew of the plot but did nothing to stop it. The Katanga government did
not announce the death until Feb 13. Moscow charged that UN Sec. Gen.
Dag Hammarskjold was involved.
(TMC, 1994, p.1961)(PCh, 1992, p.979)(SFC, 5/17/97,
p.A14)(SFC, 5/3/00, p.A14)(WSJ, 11/9/01, p.A1)
1963 Jan 17, Soviet leader
Khrushchev visited the Berlin Wall. [see Feb 17]
(HN, 1/17/99)
1964 Jan 17, The PLO charter was
put together with articles that proclaimed Israel an illegal state and
pledged "the elimination of Zionism in Palestine." The PLO was founded
in Egypt. Fatah became the core group of the PLO.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.A18)(SFC, 4/30/02, p.A8)(SFC,
11/11/04, p.18)
1966 Jan 17, Martin Luther King
Jr. opened a campaign in Chicago.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1966 Jan 17, A US Air Force B-52
carrying four unarmed hydrogen bombs crashed on the Spanish coast.
Three of the bombs were quickly recovered, but the fourth wasn't found
until April. Two US Air Force jets collided in the skies over Spanish
coastal village of Palomares. The mid-air crash of the B-52 bomber and
a KC-135 refueling plane killed 8 crew members.
(AP,
1/17/06)(www.commondreams.org/views01/0803-08.htm)
1967 Jan 17, Barney Ross
(1909), Jewish boxer born as Dov-Ber Rasofsky, died. He won the
lightweight title in 1933 and the welterweight crown in 1934. In 2006
Douglas Century authored the biography “Barney Ross.”
(www.ibhof.com/ross.htm)(WSJ, 3/17/06, p.W7)
1973 Jan 17, The US Public Health
Service linked smoking to fetal and infant risks.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1974 Jan 17-1974 Jan 19, China
occupied the Paracel Islands following the Battle of Hoang Sea, a
bloody skirmish with Vietnam.
(Econ, 3/31/07, SR
p.7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hoang_Sa)
1976 Jan 17, "I Write the Songs"
by Barry Manilow (b.1944) hit #1.
(http://tinyurl.com/36ufh8)
1977 Jan 17, The TV sitcom
“Busting Loose” began with Adam Arkin and ran for 24 episodes.
(SFC, 2/13/08, p.B7)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0192884/)
1977 Jan 17, Gary Gilmore (36),
convicted in the double murder of an elderly couple, was shot by a
firing squad at Utah State Prison in the first U.S. execution in a
decade.
(AP, 1/17/98)(MC, 1/17/02)
1970 Jan 17, Silas Trim Bissell
(d.2002) and his wife Judith, Weathermen underground members, set a
homemade bomb under the steps of the ROTC building at Washington State
Univ. It failed to go off and both were caught. Bissel went underground
but was caught and served 17 months in Lompoc (1987-1988).
(SFC, 6/24/02, p.B6)
1983 Jan 17, Alabama Gov George C.
Wallace (1919-1998), became governor for a record 4th time.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace)(www.historybuff.com/states/al.html)
1984 Jan 17, The US Supreme Court
sided with Sony and ruled, 5 to 4, that the private use of home video
cassette recorders to tape television programs did not violate federal
copyright laws.
(AP, 1/17/02)(SFC, 4/8/02, p.E1)
1985 Jan 17, A jury in New Jersey
ruled that terminally ill patients have the right to starve themselves.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1986 Jan 17, President Reagan
approved a finding that authorized the sale of weapons to Iran through
third parties.
(www.thedubyareport.com/family.html)
1987 Jan 17, A Reagan
Administration official who initiated the arms shipments to Iran,
acknowledged that the US had virtually no independent intelligence to
support its policy.
(http://tinyurl.com/py89w)
1987 Jan 17, Hans Fricke on an
undersea expedition off the east coast of Africa at a 180 meters from
Grande Comore’s west coast found and filmed a coelacanth fish at a
depth of 198 meters.
(NG, 6/1988, p.827)
1988 Jan 17, The Washington
Redskins won the NFC championship by defeating the Minnesota Vikings
17-10; the Denver Broncos beat the Cleveland Browns 38-33 to win the
AFC title.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1988 Jan 17, Haiti held a
presidential election run by the military-led junta that was boycotted
by the opposition.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1988 Jan 17, Angelo de Mojana di
Cologna, the Grand Master of The Order of St. John (Knights of Malta),
died. Fidel Castro declared a national day of mourning in Cuba.
(WSJ, 12/30/94,
p.A6)(www.worldstatesmen.org/Malta_knights.htm)
1989 Jan 17, Five children were
shot to death at the Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, Calif.,
by a drifter who then killed himself. Patrick Henry Purdy (27), an
alcoholic with a gun fetish, had gone to school there.
(AP, 1/17/99)(SFC, 10/4/06, p.A1)
1990 Jan 17, A federal judge in
Miami set March 1990 for the trial of ex-Panamanian leader Manuel
Noriega on drug trafficking charges. After initial delays, Noriega was
tried and convicted of racketeering and conspiracy to distribute
cocaine, and was sentenced to 40 years in prison, later cut to 30
years.
(AP, 1/17/00)
1991 Jan 17, The Persian Gulf War
began as Coalition planes struck targets in Iraq and Kuwait. The first
Iraqi Scud missile attacks on Israel were launched. There were reports
of death and injury, and possibly even chemical weapons being used. For
a few tense hours, it looked as though Israel would retaliate against
Iraq, causing the allied coalition to break up. Six months of
preparation and diplomacy might be undone by a few poorly aimed,
1950s-vintage ballistic missiles. Later that evening, U.S. Patriot
surface-to-air missiles were launched against the incoming Scuds, and
for the first time in history, a ballistic missile was shot down by
another missile. The use of Patriot missiles in Israel’s defense helped
to keep that country out of the Gulf War, thereby safeguarding the
integrity of the American-European-Arab coalition. Jeffrey Zahn became
the 1st US pilot shot down. Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher (33) was
shot down over western Iraq. In 1993 the ruins of his plane were found.
In 2009 his remains were found and positively identified.
(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A8)(SFEC,12/797, p.A1,16)(HN,
1/17/99)(AP, 8/2/09)
1991 Jan 17, On the first day of
Operation Desert Storm, US-led forces hammered Iraqi targets in an
effort to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. A defiant Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein declared that the “mother of all battles” had begun. Iraq
attacked Israel with ten Scud missiles. The US Patriot defense missile
was used in battle for the first time to shoot down a Scud fired at
Saudi Arabia.
(AP, 1/17/01)
1991 Jan 17, Crude oil futures
fell $10.56 following the release of strategic US crude oil stockpiles
coinciding with the start of the Persian Gulf War.
(WSJ, 8/23/08, p.B6)
1992 Jan 17, President Bush laid a
wreath at the crypt of Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta.
(AP, 1/17/02)
1992 Jan 17, IBM announced a
nearly $5B loss for 1991.
(www.iht.com/articles/1992/01/17/ibm_.php)
1992 Jan 17, Celeste Carrington
(30), a former janitor of from East Palo Alto, Ca., shot and killed
Victor Esparza (34) in San Carlos during a robbery. 2 months later she
shot and killed Caroline Gleason (36), a property manager, during a
robbery in Palo Alto. 5 days later she wounded a 3rd person in an
attempted robbery. She was later convicted and sentenced to death. In
2009 the California Supreme court upheld her death sentence.
(SFC, 7/28/09,
p.C2)(www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S043628.PDF)
1992 Jan 17, Eight Protestant
laborers were killed in an IRA bombing in Northern Ireland.
(AP, 1/17/02)
1993 Jan 17, The United States,
accusing Iraq of a series of military provocations, unleashed Tomahawk
missiles against a military complex eight miles from downtown Baghdad.
President-elect Clinton, arriving in Washington for his inauguration,
backed the action.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1993 Jan 17, Albert Hourani
(b.1915), British academic of Lebanese origin, died. His books included
“A History of the Arab Peoples” (1991).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hourani)
1994 Jan 17, A 6.7 magnitude
earthquake struck Southern California, killing at least 61 people and
causing $20 billion worth of damage. Northridge quake hit the Los
Angeles area. It killed 72 people. Insurance losses totaled $17.8
billion.
(SFC, 4/28/97, p.A3)(SFC, 5/3/97, p.B1)(AP,
1/17/98)(Econ, 9/17/05, p.73)
1994 Jan 17, Allan Odell died at
age 90. He and his younger brother Leonard (d.1991) wrote some 7,000
Burma Shave poems beginning in 1925 in rural Minnesota. The Burma-Shave
phenomenon faded in 1963, when Phillip Morris bought Burma-Vita and the
signs began to come down.
(http://tinyurl.com/es9ab)(www.two-lane.com/burmashave.html)
1995 Jan 17, George W. Bush
(b.1946) began serving as the 46th governor of Texas. Bush had already
picked Alberto Gonzales (b.1955) as his general counsel.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush)(Econ,
7/14/07, p.38)
1995 Jan 17, A magnitude 6.9
earthquake hit the port city of Kobe, Japan. 5,502 people were killed
in the worst earthquake to hit Japan since 1923.
(WSJ, 1/18/95, p.A1)(AP, 6/22/02)(SSFC, 4/16/06,
p.F4)
1996 Jan 17, Sheik Omar
Abdel-Rahman and nine followers were handed long prison sentences for
plotting to blow up New York-area landmarks.
(AP, 1/17/01)
1996 Jan 17, Former US
Representative Barbara Jordan died in Austin, Texas, at age 59.
(AP, 1/17/01)
1996 Jan 17, Russian forces
unleashed a scorching barrage of rockets on Chechen rebels in
Pervomayskaya.
(AP, 1/17/01)
1996 Jan 17, In Spain ETA abducted
a prison officer and held him for 532 days.
(AP, 3/22/06)
1997 Jan 17, The US House ethics
committee approved a $300,000 penalty against Speaker Newt Gingrich for
ethics violations. Speaker Newt Gingrich agreed to submit to the
reprimand
(SFC, 1/18/97, p.A1) (AP, 1/17/98)
1997 Jan 17, A $40 million
navigation satellite for the US Air Force blew up on takeoff at Cape
Canaveral.
(SFC, 1/18/97, p.A3)
1997 Jan 17, Clyde William
Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930, died in New
Mexico.
(SFEC, 1/19/97, p.B6)
1997 Jan 17, In Columbia Cali
cartel bosses Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez drew prison terms of 10.5
and 9 years for cocaine trafficking.
(SFC, 1/18/97, p.C1)
1997 Jan 17, A French medical team
removed 10 bullets from Uday Hussein, son of Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
One bullet was still left lodged in his spine.
(SFC, 1/20/97, p.A13)
1997 Jan 17, A court in Ireland
granted the first divorce in the Roman Catholic country's history.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1997 Jan 17, Israel handed over
its military headquarters in Hebron to the Palestinians, ending 30
years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank city.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1997 Jan 17, Korean workers
announced a reduction in work stoppages. All out strikes were to be
scaled back to once a week.
(SFC, 1/18/97, p.A10)
1998 Jan 17, Pres. Clinton was
interrogated in his deposition In the Paula Jones case. It was the
first time a sitting president was interrogated in a court case. During
the nearly six hours of sworn testimony, Clinton denied that he had
engaged in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.A1)(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A12)(AP,
1/17/99)
1998 Jan 17, Matt Drudge reported
over the Internet that Monica Lewinsky had paid numerous service calls
to the White House.
(WSJ, 10/24/00, p.A22)
1998 Jan 17, It was reported that
the US military had begun to clear away over 50,000 land mines around
Guantanamo Naval base. The base was defended by 400 marines.
(SFC, 1/17/98, p.A10)
1998 Jan 17, It was reported that
motorists in Cairo were switching to compressed natural gas (CNG) to
fuel their vehicles. It was both cheaper and burned cleaner. Over 5,000
vehicles had made the switch.
(SFC, 1/17/98, p.A10)
1998 Jan 17, In Iraq Sadam Hussein
threatened to expel all UN arms inspectors in 6 months if the country
is not cleared of suspicions about weapons programs and if sanctions
are not lifted.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.A1)
1998 Jan 17, In South Korea some
2,500 workers marched in Seoul to protest the government’s labor reform
plan. Kim Dae-jung called for a smaller labor force to attract more
funds from the IMF and foreign investors.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.A14)
1999 Jan 17, The defending Super
Bowl champion Denver Broncos defeated the New York Jets, 23-10, to win
the American Football Conference title; the Atlanta Falcons upset the
Minnesota Vikings, 30-27, to win the National Football Conference
championship.
(AP, 1/17/04)
1999 Jan 17, As White House
lawyers met to work on President Clinton's impeachment defense, their
client spent the day preparing for his State of the Union address.
(AP, 1/17/00)
1999 Jan 17, In Bryan, Ohio, 3
freight trains crashed into each other and 2 crew members were killed.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A5)
1999 Jan 17, In Tennessee
tornadoes left 9 people dead and 100 injured with extensive damage in
28 counties.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A5)(WSJ, 1/19/99, p.A1)
1999 Jan 17, US talks with North
Korea over inspection of an underground nuclear site were adjourned.
North Korea demanded $300 million in compensation to inspect the
Kumchangni site.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A14)
1999 Jan 17, In Chile a forest
fire had destroyed 24,000 acres near San Fernando, some 80 miles south
of Santiago. It was the worst fire in 25 years.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A17)
1999 Jan 17, In Pakistan Islamic
laws were imposed in tribal areas of the northwest with punishments to
include lashings, amputations of hands and feet, and executions.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A14)
1999 Jan 17, In Turkey the
parliament voted in a new minority government under Prime Minister
Bulent Ecevit.
(WSJ, 1/18/99, p.A15)
1999 Jan 17, In Yemen 2 British
and 4 Dutch citizens were kidnapped.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A10)
2000 Jan 17, The Clinton
administration announced that talks between Israel and Syria had been
postponed indefinitely.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A1)
2000 Jan 17, In Columbia, South
Carolina, some 46,000 demonstrators marched on the Statehouse on Martin
Luther King Day decrying the Confederate flag as a symbol of slavery
and racism and called for the removal on the flag.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A1)(AP, 1/17/01)
2000 Jan 17, British
pharmaceutical firms Glaxo Wellcome PLC and SmithKline Beecham PLC
announced a merger to form the world’s largest drug maker valued at
$186 billion.
(SFC, 1/17/00, p.A1)(AP, 1/17/01)
2000 Jan 17, In Chechnya Russian
aircraft and artillery bombed Grozny with a record number of attacks.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A8)
2000 Jan 17, A boat carrying 40
migrants trying to illegally reach Puerto Rico sank off the Dominican
coast after leaving Sabana de la Mar and at least 8 people were killed.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A12)
2000 Jan 17, In Ecuador police
broke up a march by oil workers in Quito as some 30,000 troops were
deployed in fears of unrest.
(WSJ, 1/18/00, p.A1)
2000 Jan 17, In Indonesia angry
Muslims burned as many as a dozen churches at Mataram and Ampenan on
Lombok Island.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A12)
2000 Jan 17, Huseyin Velioglu,
founder and leader of Turkish Hezbollah, was killed in a shootout with
Turkish Police during a raid in the Istanbul suburb of Beykoz.
(www.tkb.org/KeyLeader.jsp?memID=5922)
2001 Jan 17, Pres. Clinton created
6 new national monuments that included: The Carrizo Plain, 204,107
acres between San Luis Obispo and Bakersfield in California; the
377,346 acres Upper Missouri River Breaks and the 51 acres Pompeys
Pillar landmark in Montana; the 486,149 acre Sonoran Desert monument in
Arizona; the 63 acre Minidoka Internment National Monument in Idaho;
and the 4,148 acre Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks in New Mexico.
(SFC, 1/17/01, p.A2)
2001 Jan 17, California used
rolling blackouts to cut off power to hundreds of thousands of people.
Gov. Davis declared a state of emergency and ordered the Dept. of Water
Resources to buy and sell electricity to help alleviate the crises.
PG&E defaulted on $76 million in short term debt.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A1)(AP, 1/17/02)
2001 Jan 17, Gregory Corso (70),
Beat poet, died in Robbinsdale, Minn. His poetry collections included
“Gasoline” and “Mindfield” (1989).
(SFC, 1/19/01, p.D7)
2001 Jan 17, In Britain the House
of Commons voted 387 to 174 to ban fox hunting.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A16)
2001 Jan 17, In Colombia 25 men
were hacked to death by some 50 AUC right-wing paramilitary at Chengue.
30 homes were set on fire and 7 men taken as hostages. Residents had
called for protection 23 months earlier.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A14)(SSFC, 1/21/01, p.D3)
2001 Jan 17, In Congo government
ministers named Joseph Kabila, son of Laurent Kabila, as temporary head
of state.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A13)
2001 Jan 17, In Indonesia
separatist rebels took 6 hostages in Irian Jaya. The kidnappers
belonged to a faction of the Free Papua Movement led by Willem Konde.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A16)
2001 Jan 17, It was reported that
Norway was lifting its ban on exports of whale meat and byproducts.
(WSJ, 1/17/01, p.A1)
2001 Jan 17, Hisham Miki (54),
head of Palestinian TV, was shot to death by 3 masked men in Gaza City.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A13)
2001 Jan 17, In Sudan some 30,000
people fled rebel-held regions in the Numa Mountains.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A16)
2002 Jan 17, Enron fired
accounting firm Arthur Andersen, citing its destruction of thousands of
documents and its accounting advice; for its part, Andersen said its
relationship with Enron ended in early December 2001 when the company
slid into the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2002 Jan 17, US Sec. of State
Powell visited Afghanistan and pledged that the US would not abandon
the country.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A20)(WSJ, 1/18/02, p.A1)
2002 Jan 17, In Arizona 2 A-10
Thunderbolt II attack jets collided and 1 pilot was killed.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A4)
2002 Jan 17, In Argentina Roque
Maccarone, president of the Central Bank, resigned in a dispute with
Economic Minister Remes Lenicov over ways to preserved the value of the
peso.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A6)
2002 Jan 17, The Congo volcano
Mount Nyiragongo erupted near Goma and rivers of lava destroyed 14
villages. Goma was devastated and some 400,000 people fled their homes.
At least 50 people were killed.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A8)(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A1)(SSFC,
1/20/02, p.A16)
2002 Jan 17, An Ecuadoran
oil-company plane crashed in Colombia and all 26 aboard were feared
dead. The plane was found Jan 24 with no survivors.
(WSJ, 1/21/02, p.A1)(SFC, 1/25/02, p.A15)
2002 Jan 17, In Leicester,
England, police arrested 2 Algerian men allegedly involved in a plot to
bomb the US Embassy in Paris. Another 8 men were arrested north of
London under the Terrorism Act.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A16)
2002 Jan 17, In Hadera, Israel, a
Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a bat mitzvah party and killed 6
people before he was beaten and killed. 30 more were wounded.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A1)
2002 Jan 17, In Nigeria labor
leaders ended a 2-day general strike after Adams Oshiomole and other
activists of the Labor Congress were arrested.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A8)
2002 Jan 17, In Peru some 200
Aguaruna Indians attacked settlers near the Ecuador border and killed
14 people. Landless peasants had begun settling the area in 1989.
(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A4)
2002 Jan 17, Camilo Jose Cela
(85), Spanish novelist and 1989 Noble Prize winner, died in Madrid.
(WSJ, 1/18/02, p.A1)
2003 Jan 17, Tom Ridge sailed
through Senate confirmation hearings on his way to becoming the
nation's first Homeland Security Department chief.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2003 Jan 17, Constellation Brands
of Fairport, NY, announced a $1.4 billion acquisition of Australia's
BRL Hardy. The combination would form the world's largest wine company.
(SFC, 1/18/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 17, Richard Crenna (75),
radio, film and TV actor, died.
(SFC, 1/20/03, p.B4)
2003 Jan 17, Margo Patterson Doss
(b.1920), former SF Chronicle columnist, died. In 1961 she began
writing her Sunday column “San Francisco at Your Feet” and continued
for 30 years. During the last decade of her life she gardened in
Bolinas and wrote for the Point Reyes Light.
(SFC, 1/22/09, p.B1)
2003 Jan 17, Gertrude Janeway
(93), the last known widow of a Union veteran from the Civil War, died
in Blaine, Tenn. She had married John Janeway in 1927 when he was 81
and she was barely 18.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2003 Jan 17, A bomb ripped through
a village in northern Bangladesh during an annual carnival, killing six
people and wounding six others.
(AP, 1/18/03)
2003 Jan 17, Parliament of the
Bosnian Serb ministate approved a Cabinet and Dragan Mikerevic (48) as
the new prime minister.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, France and Spain
opened the new 5.3-mile Somport tunnel through the western Pyrenees
mountains.
(AP, 1/18/03)
2003 Jan 17, On the 12th
anniversary of the Gulf War, a defiant Saddam Hussein called on his
people to rise up and defend the nation against a new U.S.-led attack.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2003 Jan 17, Iraq and Russia
signed three oil agreements for exploration and development of oil
fields in southern and western Iraq.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, In Kenya informer
William Mwaura Munuhe (27) was found dead at his home in the affluent
Nairobi suburb of Karen, two days after the U.S. Embassy and Kenyan
police tried to trap genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga.
(AP, 1/21/03)
2003 Jan 17, Massive flooding
caused by Cyclone Delfina ravaged parts of Malawi and Mozambique,
washing away homes and crops, submerging roads and bridges, and cutting
off electricity in the impoverished nations.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Two Palestinian
gunmen infiltrated the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, killing an
Israeli man as he opened the door of his home and wounding three other
people. One gunman was shot and killed in the attack.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Poland Prime Minister
Leszek Miller fired his health minister and 2 deputy finance ministers
resigned in the 2nd Cabinet reshuffle this month.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Russian prosecutors
presented a criminal dossier on feared Soviet secret police chief
Lavrenty Beria, including a list of hundreds of women he had allegedly
stalked and raped.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, The Strategic
Partnership with Africa (SPA), made of 15 developed nations,
international lending institutions and UN agencies, concluded its
annual meeting in Addis Ababa. More than 20 developed nations, lending
institutions and UN agencies agreed to increase aid to Africa.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Turkish troops killed
12 Kurdish rebels in the southeast over the past two days.
(AP, 1/17/03)
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)
2005 Jan 17, SF and other US
cities held parades honoring Martin Luther King.
(SFC, 1/18/05, p.A1)
2005 Jan 17, Virginia Mayo
(b.1920), film actress, died in LA. Her over 40 films included “White
Heat” (1933) and “Best years of Our Lives” (1946).
(SFC, 1/18/05, p.B4)
2005 Jan 17, British Treasury
chief Gordon Brown called on wealthy nations and international
institutions to write off Africa's debt, saying debts incurred by past
generations are keeping the continent poor.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan 17, Chinese news reports
said authorities have arrested dozens of government officials and
others accused in a scheme to steal 7.4 billion yuan ($900 million)
from a state bank through fraudulent loans.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan 17, Zhao Ziyang (85),
former Chinese leader (1980-1987), died after 15 years under house
arrest. He was ousted as China's Communist Party leader after
sympathizing with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests. In
2009 a secret recording of his insights regarding the 1989 protests
were translated edited and published by Bao Pu: “Prisoner of the State:
The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang.”
(AP, 1/17/05)(SFC, 1/17/05, p.B4)(Econ, 1/22/05,
p.82)(Econ, 5/23/09, p.88)
2005 Jan 17, Iranian President
Mohammed Khatami arrived in Zimbabwe to a red carpet welcome from his
counterpart Robert Mugabe with whom he is due to hold talks over two
days.
(AP, 1/18/05)
2005 Jan 17, Iraqi expatriates in
14 countries began registering to vote in Iraq's Jan. 30 elections.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2005 Jan 17, Gunmen killed 8 Iraqi
National Guardsmen at a checkpoint northeast of Baghdad, and 8 people
died in a suicide car bombing at a police station outside the capital.
Two Iraqi government auditors were shot to death after armed gunmen
stopped their car in an area southeast of Baghdad. In Ramadi, officials
found four bodies, three civilians and one Iraqi soldier. They bore
handwritten signs declaring them collaborators.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan 17, Israeli warplanes
attacked suspected Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon after the
guerrillas said they blew up an Israeli bulldozer in a disputed area
near the border, reportedly causing casualties.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan 17, Palestinian leader
Mahmoud Abbas ordered his security forces to try to prevent attacks
against Israel and to investigate a shooting at a Gaza Strip crossing
that killed six Israeli civilians last week.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan 17, Russian police
stopped angry retirees from blocking traffic, the third day of protests
in President Vladimir Putin's hometown against welfare benefit cutoffs.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan 17, In Thailand a
collision on Bangkok’s new subway injured 200 and suspended service for
a week. A crew error was blamed.
(WSJ, 1/18/05, p.A1)
2005 Jan 17, Singapore said its
exports expanded by 17 percent to a record high in 2004, reflecting
strong demand from China for oil and commodities and solid sales of
electronics and pharmaceuticals to the United States and European Union.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2006 Jan 17, The US rejected a
Philippine request to hand over 4 Marines to be tried for rape, setting
off anti-American protests in Manila and elsewhere.
(WSJ, 1/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Jan 17, Civil liberties
groups filed lawsuits in NYC and Detroit seeking to block President
Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, arguing the electronic
surveillance of American citizens was unconstitutional.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, The US Supreme Court
told the Justice Department to butt out of the private decisions of
terminally ill patients in Oregon, the only state that specifically
allows physician-assisted suicide. The court ruled 6-3 ruling that
Congress hadn't given the Justice Department authority to take such
action.
(AP, 1/18/06)
2006 Jan 17, The US SEC voted on
proposals for a massive revamp on how companies disclose executive pay.
(WSJ, 1/17/06, p.C1)
2006 Jan 17, California executed
Clarence Ray Allen, its oldest death row inmate, minutes after his 76th
birthday, despite arguments that putting to death an elderly, blind and
wheelchair-bound man was cruel and unusual punishment. He was sentenced
to death in 1982 for hiring a hit man who killed a witness and two
bystanders.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Austria said it will
honor an arbitration court decision and give five precious Gustav Klimt
paintings to a California woman who says the Nazis stole them from her
Jewish family.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Outgoing President
Eduardo Rodriguez fired Bolivia's army chief over his decision to have
28 Chinese shoulder-launched missiles destroyed in the US.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Cambodia, under US
pressure, released four prominent government critics from a Phnom Penh
prison but said they will still face defamation charges.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, In Ghana first lady
Laura Bush announced a US-backed program to provide 15 million
textbooks for students in sub-Saharan Africa where more than one-third
of primary school aged children are not enrolled in school.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, In Haiti gunmen
killed two Jordanian UN peacekeepers and seriously wounded a third at a
checkpoint in Cite Soleil, a slum in Port-au-Prince.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Subur Sugiarto, an
alleged key aide to a Malaysian fugitive blamed for a series of deadly
terrorist attacks in Indonesia, was captured in the central Javanese
town of Boyolali en route to Jakarta. A local officer alleged that
Sugiarto was "a henchman" of Noordin Top, who is believed to be a
senior member of the al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian terror group
Jemaah Islamiyah.
(AP, 1/19/06)
2006 Jan 17, Iran lifted its ban
on CNN, a day after the government barred the US network from the
country because of its mistranslation of nuclear comments by Pres.
Ahmadinejad.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, In Iraq masked gunmen
killed two people in attacks on an election headquarters and a Kurdish
political party office in the northern city of Kirkuk. Hostage American
reporter Jill Carroll appeared in a silent 20-second video aired by
Al-Jazeera television, which said her abductors had given the United
States 72 hours to free female prisoners in Iraq or she would be
killed. Carroll was freed unharmed on March 30, 2006.
(AP, 1/17/06)(AP, 1/17/07)
2006 Jan 17, Thousands of
pro-Syrian Lebanese chanting "Death to America" protested near the US
Embassy against what they called American meddling in the country's
affairs.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il appeared to have left China after meeting Chinese leaders
in Beijing to discuss six-party talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's
nuclear weapons program.
(Reuters, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Napoleon Ortigoza
(73), a former army captain who spent a third of his life in Paraguay
jail as a political prisoner, died in a hospital. Ortigoza was
imprisoned in 1962 by Alfredo Stroessner's security apparatus on
charges of conspiring to topple the right-wing military strongman.
(AP, 1/19/06)
2006 Jan 17, In the Philippines 4
officers, accused of leading hundreds of troops in a failed 2003
mutiny, escaped from an army prison. The army lieutenants were
identified as Lawrence San Juan, Sonny Sarmiento, Nathaniel Rabonza and
Patricio Bumindang.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Russia's foreign
minister indicated that Moscow was not ready to support moves by the
U.S. and its European allies to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council
over its nuclear program, while the West stepped up pressure on Tehran.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, In Russia 2 people
died of exposure and 14 more were hospitalized in a single day as
temperatures plunged in Moscow dropping from about freezing to minus-28
Celsius (minus-18 Fahrenheit) overnight.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Suspected Tiger
rebels set off two more mines and fought a gunbattle with troops
leaving 3 people dead. The United Nations urged talks and peace-broker
Norway made a fresh bid to pull Sri Lanka back from the brink of war.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Taiwan's PM Frank
Hsieh announced his resignation, paving the way for a Cabinet reshuffle.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2007 Jan 17, A year after
disclosure of a domestic spying program that President Bush maintained
was within his authority to operate, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
announced the administration had shifted its position and would seek
the approval of an independent panel of federal judges.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2007 Jan 17, Alaska’s newly
elected Gov. Sarah Palin (42) delivered her 1st state speech.
(http://community.adn.com/?q=adn/node/104605)
2007 Jan 17, The Doomsday Clock,
created in 1947 and run by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, was
nudged forward to 11:55 due to moves by Iran and North Korea. It
reached 11:58 in 1953 and moved back to 11:43 in 1991.
(SFC, 1/18/07, p.A10)
2007 Jan 17, In Texas James
Waller, who spent 10 years behind bars for the rape of a boy, became
the 12th person in Dallas County to be cleared by DNA evidence.
(AP, 1/19/07)(http://tinyurl.com/27evec)
2007 Jan 17, A US snow and ice
storm was blamed for at least 64 deaths in nine states. These included
20 deaths in Oklahoma, 9 in Missouri, 8 in Iowa, 4 in New York, 5 in
Texas, 4 in Michigan, 3 in Arkansas, and 1 each in Maine and Indiana.
(AP, 1/17/07)(SFC, 1/18/07, p.A3)
2007 Jan 17, The SF Police
Commission approved Mayor Newsom’s request to add surveillance cameras
at 8 additional high-crime locations.
(SFC, 1/18/07, p.B3)
2007 Jan 17, Art Buchwald (81),
columnist and author, died. For over four decades he chronicled the
life and times of Washington DC with an infectious wit and endeared
himself to many with his never-say-die battle with failing kidneys.
(AP, 1/18/07)
2007 Jan 17, In southern Australia
firefighters battled to contain a wildfire that razed a number of homes
amid soaring temperatures and warnings that the worst was yet to come.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, Britain’s Guardian
reported that senior executives at defense manufacturer BAE Systems
have been named as suspects in a corruption inquiry being conducted by
the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into contracts with South Africa.
(AFP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, Chadian rebels
captured the small town of Ade on the border with Sudan, the latest in
a series of raids in the lawless east of the central African country.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, In southern Colombia
a pickup truck carrying 660 pounds of explosives destroyed a dairy
plant owned by Swiss food giant Nestle SA, an attack police attributed
to leftist rebels.
(AP, 1/18/07)
2007 Jan 17, Conservationists said
rebels in eastern Congo, loyal to warlord Laurent Nkunda, have killed
and eaten two silverback mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park.
Congo’s army said Nkunda agreed two weeks ago to stop fighting
government forces in exchange for a government promise not to pursue
war crimes charges against him.
(AP, 1/18/07)
2007 Jan 17, In Greece protesters
torched cars, broke bank windows and clashed with riot police during a
student demonstration against plans to allow private universities to
operate.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, In Honduras a
concrete wall collapsed at a coffee warehouse in Villanueva, crushing
six workers under tons of bagged coffee beans.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, A suicide car bomb
struck a market in the Shiite district of Sadr City and police said 17
people died. Another suicide car bomb exploded earlier at a checkpoint
in the city of Kirkuk after guards opened fire as the driver approached
a police station. The blast killed eight people and injured dozens. A
mortar attack on a residential area in Iskandariyah killed a woman and
injured 10 people. Police found the body of an Iraqi policeman whose
hands and legs had been bound hanging by electric wire, two days after
he was kidnapped while going to his home in the same area. Gunmen in a
car also opened fire on two brothers, aged 30 and 35, on their way to
work as construction workers in Mahaweel, 35 miles south of Baghdad.
One was killed and the other was wounded. In Baghdad, a civilian was
killed in a drive-by shooting and police found 5 unidentified bodies.
An attack in Baghdad on a convoy of a Western democracy institute
killed a 28-year-old Ohio woman and three security contractors.
(AP, 1/17/07)(AP, 1/19/07)
2007 Jan 17, Alice Lakwena, a
Ugandan warrior priestess who led an insurgency in the 1980s, died at a
Kenyan refugee camp. She was known as Alice Auma and claimed to have
been possessed by a spirit called Lakwena, which gave her spiritual
powers to protect her fighters from bullets by anointing them with oil.
Her cousin, Joseph Kony, is the messianic leader of the Lord's
Resistance Army.
(AP, 1/18/07)(Econ, 1/27/07, p.87)
2007 Jan 17, Nepal's former
communist guerrillas began an orderly handover of weapons to UN
monitors, putting in motion a landmark peace deal that calls for
thousands of fighters to disarm and be confined to camps.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, In Nigeria rebels
released 5 Chinese telecommunications workers and an Italian oil worker
abducted in the southern delta region. A female (22) in Lagos died from
bird flu. This was Nigeria’s first confirmed fatality from Avian
Influenza. Tests on 3 other deaths were inconclusive.
(AP, 1/18/07)(AFP, 1/31/07)
2007 Jan 17, Russian prosecutors
charged Alexei Frenkel, a bank officer, with organizing the murder of a
senior Central Bank official who sought to clean up Russia's banking
industry. Charges were formally entered against Frenkel in connection
with the killing of Andrei Kozlov, who was shot at point-blank range on
Sept. 13 as he left a soccer game in Moscow.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, Russian lawmakers
sharply criticized Estonia for possible plans to remove a 1947 statue
that honors Red Army soldiers who helped drive Nazi forces from the
Baltic nation. Last week the Estonian president signed into law a bill
allowing for the removal of the statue. The monument upset many in the
country that suffered five decades of Soviet occupation.
(AP, 1/18/07)
2007 Jan 17, A top Somali lawmaker
closely associated with the recently ousted Islamic movement was voted
out as speaker by parliament, a move that could undermine
reconciliation efforts in the restive country.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, In Thailand suspected
separatist rebels shot dead two Buddhist villagers in the
Muslim-majority south. The insurgency there has killed more than 1,800
people in three years.
(AFP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, Yevgeny Kushnaryov
(55), described as "the right-hand man" to Ukraine's pro-Russian PM,
Viktor Yanukovych, died from his wounds one day after being shot by one
of his hunting companions.
(www.alertnet.org/thenews/pictures/MOS11.htm)
2007 Jan 17, Morgan Tsvangirai,
Zimbabwe's main opposition leader, urged mass protests against
President Robert Mugabe's nearly 27-year-rule.
(AFP, 1/17/07)
2008 Jan 17, The White House,
members of Congress and Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke agreed that
strong action is needed to help avoid a US recession. The DJIA fell
over 306 points to 12,159.
(SFC, 1/18/08, p.A1)
2008 Jan 17, The US EPA said
Massey Energy, the country’s 4th largest coal producer, had agreed to
pay a $20 million fine as part of a settlement over allegations that it
routinely polluted hundreds of streams and waterways in West Virginia
and Kentucky.
(SFC, 1/18/08, p.A7)
2008 Jan 17, A US federal judge
struck down Texas laws barring out-of-state retailers from shipping
wine to consumers.
(WSJ, 1/18/08, p.A1)
2008 Jan 17, The NYSE agreed to
buy the American Stock Exchange for $260 million in stock.
(SFC, 1/18/08, p.C4)
2008 Jan 17, Merrill Lynch &
Co Inc reported about $16 billion in mortgage-related write-downs and
adjustments in the worst quarter of the company's history.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2008 Jan 17, Investigators probing
the source of a listeria outbreak said the strain that killed three
people was found at a dairy processing plant in central Massachusetts.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, Scientists at
Stemagen, a California company, reported that they have created the
first mature cloned human embryos from single skin cells taken from
adults.
(SFC, 1/18/08, p.A18)
2008 Jan 17, Australia said it
would send a ship to pick up two anti-whaling activists who jumped on a
Japanese harpoon vessel from a rubber boat in Antarctic waters,
offering a solution to a tense, two-day standoff on the high seas.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, Britain accused
Russia of "conduct not worthy of a great country" after what it called
a campaign of intimidation by security services forced its cultural
centers in two Russian cities to halt operations.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, A British Airways jet
from Beijing carrying 152 people crash-landed, injuring 19 people and
causing more than 200 flights to be canceled at Europe's busiest
airport.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Burkina Faso
leaders of half a dozen African countries agreed on Ivory Coast's
Philippe-Henri Tacoury-Tabley as the new head of the central bank of
the eight-nation West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA).
(AFP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, In southwestern
Colombia the Galeras volcano erupted violently, spewing ash miles into
the sky and prompting the evacuation of several thousand people living
nearby.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2008 Jan 17, Members of the
European Parliament adopted a resolution criticizing Egypt's human
rights record, even after Cairo summoned EU ambassadors to complain
about the text.
(AFP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Germany officials
said a troubled teen (16) is spending nine months in remote Siberia as
part of efforts to turn him away from violence. "If he doesn't hack
wood, his place is cold. If he doesn't get water, he can't wash."
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, Bobby Fischer
(b.1943), the reclusive chess genius, died in Iceland. He became a Cold
War hero by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and later
renounced his American citizenship.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Iraq a suicide
bomber blew himself up inside a Shiite mosque on the outskirts of
Baqouba, killing at least 11 and wounded 15.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2008 Jan 17, An Israeli court
sentenced a major in Israel's army reserves to five years in prison for
offering secret information to Iran and the Islamic militant group
Hamas. David Shamir (45), a psychiatrist, was convicted of contact with
a foreign agent and possession of information with the intent of
endangering state security. He never managed to deliver any secret
information.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, Rains battered
portions of flood-ravaged southern Africa, killing at least three
people in Malawi and forcing Zambia to declare a national disaster.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Mexico officials
found six bodies inside a Tijuana house where gunmen took refuge during
a shootout with soldiers and police.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, Militants in
Hamas-ruled Gaza bombarded southern Israel with rockets and Israel
pounded back with air and ground fire pushing peace efforts to the
sidelines. Israeli rockets killed at least 5 Palestinians including 2
militants and 3 civilians.
(AP, 1/17/08)(SFC, 1/18/08, p.A10)
2008 Jan 17, In New Zealand Karen
Aim (26), a Scottish tourist from the Orkney Islands, was attacked on
her way home after drinking with friends in the town of Taupo. Police
responding to reports of vandalism at a Taupo high school found her
lying in a pool of blood on a street corner. In March a 14-year-old boy
was charged with her slaying.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Pakistan a
suspected Sunni extremist opened fire in a Shiite mosque, in the
northwestern city of Peshawar, and then blew himself up, killing 9
people and wounding at least 20 on the eve of the Ashoura religious
festival. Helicopter gunships opened fire on two suspect cars near a
third fort in South Waziristan, killing eight militants. A teenager
(15) who said he was part of a team of assassins sent to kill former PM
Benazir Bhutto was arrested near the Afghan border. The teen was also
involved in a plot to attack Shiites during an Ashoura festival.
(AP, 1/17/08)(AFP, 1/18/08)(AP, 1/19/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Somalia Islamic
militants fired mortar shells and guns in Mogadishu sparking crossfire
with Ethiopian troops that left at least 20 people dead.
(SFC, 1/18/08, p.A4)
2008 Jan 17, Sri Lanka's military
said air force jets destroyed a hideout used by senior Tiger rebels.
The pro-rebel TamilNet Web site said the jets had struck a civilian
area and seven people had been wounded. Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels
fatally shot 10 ethnic Sinhalese civilians in southern Thanamalwila
village. A pro-rebel Web site said those killed were civilians carrying
guns provided by the government after an attack on a farm in the same
area that killed 32 people this week.
(AP, 1/17/08)(AP, 1/18/08)
2009 Jan 17, President-elect
Barack Obama rolled into the capital city after pledging to help bring
the nation "a new Declaration of Independence" and promising to rise to
the stern challenges of the times. He kicked off a four-day inaugural
celebration with a daylong rail trip, retracing the path Abraham
Lincoln took in 1861.
(AP, 1/18/09)
2009 Jan 17, The US Department of
Defense announced that it transferred six detainees out of Guantanamo,
leaving about 245 at the offshore prison. Four detainees were sent to
Iraq, one to Algeria and one to Afghanistan. Since 2002, more than 525
detainees have departed Guantanamo. Haji Bismullah (29) of Afghanistan
had always insisted that he was no terrorist.
(AP, 1/18/09)(SFC, 1/19/09, p.A4)
2009 Jan 17, A US researcher who
visited the North said North Korea has hardened its stance on
disarmament, saying it has "weaponized" plutonium into warheads, but
hopes for better ties with President-elect Barack Obama.
(AP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, Susanna Foster (84),
film star, died. Her dozen films included "The Phantom of the Opera"
(1943).
(SFC, 1/21/09, p.B6)
2009 Jan 17, In Afghanistan a
suicide bomb hit outside the German embassy in Kabul, killing four
civilians and wounding dozens of people including a US soldier who
later died of his injuries.
(AFP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, PM Gordon Brown told
British banks they must own up to the extent of their bad assets amid
more reports his government could launch a fresh bailout of the
struggling sector.
(AP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, Edmund de Rothschild
(93), former chairman of N.M. Rothschild and Sons merchant bank and a
noted horticulturist, died at his home in England.
(AP, 1/21/09)
2009 Jan 17, A human rights groups
said Ugandan rebels in eastern Congo have ruthlessly killed at least
620 people in the past month, and vulnerable civilians in the region
desperately need protection. According to Ugandan troops, the Lord's
Resistance Army rebels set fire to a church in the village of Tora. it
was unclear how many people were killed.
(AP, 1/18/09)(AP, 1/19/09)
2009 Jan 17, A helicopter carrying
10 French soldiers crashed off the coast of Gabon in central Africa. At
least 2 survived and 2 were killed as rescuers searched for 6 missing.
(AP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, Iran's state news
IRNA reported that four Iranians have been convicted and sentenced to
prison in an alleged US-backed plot to topple the government.
(AP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, Israel bombarded
dozens of Hamas targets hours before a government vote on an Egyptian
brokered cease-fire, prompting Egypt to demand an immediate halt to the
3-week-old Gaza offensive.
(AP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, Malaysia's opposition
snatched a parliamentary seat from the beleaguered coalition
government, in a by-election seen as a test of the nation's political
mood.
(AFP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, In Tijuana, Mexico, a
prostitute (19) was smothered to death. 2 US sailors, petty officers
Jarrett Monzingo and Joshua Dockery, were taken into custody and faced
murder and attempted-murder charges while being held at La Mesa Prison.
(AP, 2/12/09)
2009 Jan 17, Two dehydrated men
from Myanmar were found bobbing in an ice box in the Torres Strait off
Australia. They told authorities they had spent 25 days adrift after
their fishing boat sank. There was no sign of 18 other crew members.
(AP, 1/20/09)
2009 Jan 17, Pakistani security
forces, backed by artillery and tanks, killed 14 Taliban insurgents in
heavy fighting in the Mohmand region on the Afghan border.
(Reuters, 1/18/09)
2009 Jan 17, Russia and Ukraine
held gas crisis talks in Moscow that the European Union said were the
"last and best chance" to resolve the row that has left Europe
struggling without key gas supplies.
(AFP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, Sri Lanka’s
Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka said troops have almost completely
cornered the Tamil Tigers in their northeastern jungle base and that
the rebels' elusive supremo may already have fled the island.
(AFP, 1/18/09)
2009 Jan 17, Near Yemen hundreds
of people were missing and feared dead after three boats carrying about
400 migrants from Somalia capsized.
(AP, 1/18/09)
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