Today in History - August 6
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258CE Aug 6, Pope
Sixtus II, bishop of Rome (257-58), was beheaded upon orders of Emperor
Valerian.
(ITV, 1/96, p.60)(MC, 8/6/02)
1177 Aug 2, Philip of Flanders
arrived in Acre. A Christian army under the joint command of Philip of
Flanders and Raymond of Tripoli marched west to campaign against the
Muslims around Tripoli.
(ON, 6/07,
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_of_Flanders)
1221 Aug 6, St. Dominic, Italian
founder of the Dominicans religious order, died.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1497 Aug 6, John Cabot returned to
England after his first successful journey to the Labrador coast.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1504 Aug 6, Matthew "Nosey"
Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, was born.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1623 Aug 6, Anne Hathaway, wife of
William Shakespeare, died.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1637 Aug 6, Ben Johnson (65),
English dramatist and poet, died. In 1960 Jonas Barish wrote "Ben
Jonson and the Language of Prose Comedy."
(AP, 1/4/98)(WUD, 1994, p.771)(SFC, 4/4/98,
p.A24)(MC, 8/6/02)
1651 Aug 6, Francois Fenelon
(d.1715), French theologian and writer (Playing for Time), was born.
"Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his
words as a quack uses his remedies."
(AP, 11/27/98)(MC, 8/6/02)
1660 Aug 6, Diego Rodriguez de
Silva Velasquez (b.1599), Spanish court painter, died.
(WSJ, 2/24/00, p.A16)(MC, 8/6/02)
1661 Aug 6, Holland sold Brazil to
Portugal for 8 million guilders.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1664 Aug 6, Johann Christoph
Schmidt, composer, was born.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1675 Aug 6, Russian Czar Aleksei
banned foreign haircuts.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1774 Aug 6, Mother Ann Lee,
founder of the Shaker Movement, arrived in NY.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1787 Aug 6, The Constitutional
Convention in Philadelphia began to debate the articles con-tained in a
draft of the United States Constitution.
(AP, 8/6/97)
1806 Aug 6, The Holy Roman Empire
went out of existence as Emperor Francis I abdicated.
(AP, 8/6/97)
1809 Aug 6, Alfred Lord Tennyson
(d.1892), English poet laureate (1850), was born. His work included:
"The Charge of the Light Brigade." "Knowledge comes, but wisdom
lingers."
(HN, 8/6/98)(AP, 10/6/00)
1811 Aug 6, Judah Philip Benjamin
(d.1884), Sec. War and Sec. State for the Confederacy, was born a
British subject in the Virgin Islands. He went on to become the first
professed Jew elected to U.S. Senate, from the state of Louisiana in
1852. He was brought to South Carolina as a child. After attending Yale
(1825--7) he settled in New Orleans. He served Louisiana in the US
Senate (Whig, 1853--9; Democrat, 1859--61). He was noted for his
pro-slavery speeches in the Senate. Favoring secession, he served the
Confederacy as attorney general (1861) and then as secretary of war
(1861--2). He was blamed for the Confederate army's lack of equip-ment,
but Jefferson Davis promoted him to secretary of state (1862--5). Late
in the war he urged the recruitment of slaves into the Confederate
Army. With the collapse of the Confeder-acy he fled to the West Indies
and then to England (1866), where he made a brilliant new ca-reer as a
British barrister, especially in appeal cases. He wrote the Treatise on
the Law of Sale of Personal Property (1868), which at once became the
standard in the field. In 1872, he be-came a counsel to the queen.
Benjamin died in Paris.
(HNQ, 12/8/98)(MC, 8/6/02)
1820 Aug 6, M.A. Elisa Bonaparte
(43), Corsican monarch of Lucca, died.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1825 Aug 6, Simon Bolivar drew up
a constitution for Bolivia in which a life president ap-pointed his
successor. Sucre served as the sole capital until losing a brief civil
war to La Paz in 1899. Upper Peru became the autonomous republic of
Bolivia.
(Econ, 7/1/06, p.77)(AP, 7/21/07)(AP, 8/6/08)
1862 Aug 6, Confederate Army
ironclad "Arkansas" was badly damaged in Union attack.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1863 Aug 6, The CSS Alabama
captured the Federal ship Sea Bride near the Cape of Good Hope.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1864 Aug 6, Rebels evacuated Ft.
Powell, Mobile Bay.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1870 Aug 6, White conservatives
suppressed the black vote and captured Tenn. Legislature.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1870 Aug 6, At the Battle at
Spicheren: Prussia beat France. Crown Prince Frederick, commanding one
of the three Prussian armies invading France, defeated French Marshal
MacMahon at Worth and Weissenburg, pushed him out of Alsace, surrounded
Strasbourg, and drove on towards Nancy. Two other Prussian armies
isolated Marshal Bazaine's forces in Metz.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Spicheren)(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1881 Aug 6, Alexander Fleming
(d.1955), British (Scottish) bacteriologist who co-discovered
penicillin in [1928] 1929, was born. He won the Nobel Prize in 1954.
(AHD, 1971, p.501)(WUD, 1994, p.542)(HN, 8/6/98)(MC,
8/6/02)
1888 Aug 6, Martha Turner was
murdered by an unknown assailant, believed to be Jack the Ripper, in
London, England. Between August and November 506 women were murdered in
London’s Whitechapel district. In 1994 Philip Sugden authored “The
Complete History of Jack the Ripper.”
(HN, 8/6/98)(WSJ, 1/31/09, p.W8)
1889 Aug 6, Major General George
Kenney, commander of the U.S. Fifth Air Force in New Guinea and the
Solomons during World War II, was born.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1890 Aug 6, Cy Young gained the
first of his 511 major league victories as he pitched the Cleveland
Spiders to a win over the Chicago Colts. However, the score is a matter
of dispute, with some sources saying 6-1, and others saying 8-1.
(AP, 8/6/07)
1890 Aug 6, Convicted murderer
William Kemmler became the 1st person to be executed in the electric
chair. He was put to death at Auburn State Prison in New York for
murdering his lover, Matilda Ziegler, with an axe. In 2003 Jill Jonnes
authored "Empires of Light," and account of how Edison, Tesla and
Westinghouse brought electric power to public use. In 2003 Mark Es-sig
authored "Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death."
(AP, 8/6/97)(HN, 8/6/98)(MC, 8/6/02)(WSJ, 8/19/03,
p.D5)(Econ, 9/20/03, p.81)
1904 Aug 6, The Japanese army in
Korea surrounded a Russian army retreating to Manchu-ria.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1911 Aug 6, Lucille Ball (d.1989),
American actress and comedian, was born. "I don't know anything about
luck. I've never banked on it, and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to
me is something else: hard work -- and realizing what is opportunity
and what isn't."
(AP, 3/12/98)(HN, 8/6/98)
1914 Aug 6, Ellen Louise Wilson,
the first wife of the twenty-eighth president, Woodrow Wil-son, died of
Barite’s disease.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1914 Aug 6, Austria-Hungary
declared war against Russia and Serbia declared war against Germany.
(AP, 8/6/00)
1914 Aug 6, A German Zeppelin
bombed Liege City and killed 9 people.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1916 Aug 6, Richard Hofstadter,
physicist who won the Nobel prize in 1961 for his studies of neutrons
and protons, was born.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1918 Aug 6, The 2nd battle of the
Marne ended.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1926 Aug 6, Gertrude "Trudy"
Ederle (1905-2003), American Olympic gold medalist, became the first
woman to swim the English Channel. Before setting out from Cap
Griz-Nez, France, at 7:09 a.m., Ederle coated her body with layers of
lard and petroleum jelly to insulate her from the cold waters. On that
day, the sea was so rough that steamship crossings had been cancelled,
but Ederle swam on in spite of being buffeted by waves and plagued by
seasickness. She reached Dover at 9:40 p.m., after swimming the Channel
in 14 hours and 39 minutes. This time broke the existing world record
of 21 hours and 45 minutes set by British Navy Captain Matthew Webb in
1875. Ederle died Nov 30, 2003. [see Sep 11,1951]
(AP, 8/6/97)(HNQ, 7/31/98)(HNPD, 8/30/98)(SFC,
12/1/03, p.A23)
1926 Aug 6, Warner Bros. premiered
its "Vitaphone" sound-on-disc movie system in New York with a showing
of "Don Juan" featuring music and sound effects.
(AP, 8/6/08)
1927 Aug 6, Andy Warhol, American
pop artist, was born.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1927 Aug 6, A Massachusetts high
court heard the final plea from Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italians
convicted of murder.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1930 Aug 6, In NYC state Supreme
Court Judge Joseph Force Crater (b.1889) dined at a West 45th Street
steakhouse with a group of friends that included a showgirl. Crater had
earlier withdrawn $5,150 from a pair of bank accounts. He was last seen
at 9:15 p.m., climbing into the cab. Crater had been recently appointed
by Gov. Franklin Roosevelt to the NY Supreme Court. In 2004 Richard J.
Tofel authored “Vanishing Point,” an account of Tammany Hall and
Crater’s disappearance. The 1947 film “The Judge Steps Out,” starring
Alexander Knox, was inspired by the case. Evidence in 2005 suggested
that several men killed the judge and buried him under the Coney Island
Boardwalk in Brooklyn. [see Sep 1]
(WSJ, 9/9/04,
p.D8)(www.who2.com/judgecrater.html)(http://tinyurl.com/devrl)
1937 Aug 6, Franco's artillery
opened fire on Madrid.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1942 Aug 6, Goering proclaimed
occupied areas "thoroughly empty to plunder."
(MC, 8/6/02)
1942 Aug 6, The Soviet city of
Voronezh fell to the German army.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1944 Aug 6, All 1,200 Jewish death
marchers from Lipcani, Moldavia, died by this date.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1944 Aug 6, The deportation of
70,000 Jews from Lodz. Poland, to Auschwitz began.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1945 Aug 6, Hiroshima, Japan, was
struck with the uranium bomb, Little Boy, from the B-29 airplane, Enola
Gay, piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets (1915-2007) of the US Air Force along
with 11 other men. The 9,600 pound bomb had a 2-part core of enriched
uranium-235. It killed an esti-mated 140,000 people in the first use of
a nuclear weapon in warfare. Major Thomas Wilson Ferebee (d.2000 at 81)
was the bombardier. Richard Nelson (d.2003) was the radio operator. In
1946 John Hersey authored “Hiroshima,” an account of the bombing based
on interviews with 6 survivors.
(AP, 8/6/97)(SSFC, 7/31/05, p.B2)(WSJ, 8/12/06,
p.P8)(SFC, 11/2/07, p.A23)
1948 Aug 6, Bob Mathias won the
decathlon at the London Olympics.
(AP, 8/6/98)
1951 Aug 6, Typhoon floods killed
4,800 in Manchuria.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1959 Aug 6, Preston Sturges (60),
born as Edmund Biden, US director, screenwriter, died.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1960 Aug 6, Chubby Checker debuted
his version of "The Twist" on the Dick Clark Show. Hank Ballard did the
original in 1958.
(http://lpintop.tripod.com/oldiesconnection/id41.html)
1962 Aug 6, Jamaica became an
independent dominion within the British Commonwealth.
(AP, 8/6/97)
1964 Aug 6, In Eastern Nevada a
bristlecone pine tree, Pinus longaeva, near Wheeler Peak was cut down
for scientific study of its age. The tree had been named Prometheus
(WPN-114) for its age which turned out to be about 4,900 years.
(SFEC, 8/23/98, Z1 p.1,4)
1965 Aug 6, The Voting Rights Act
of 1965 was passed and signed by President Johnson. It outlawed the
literacy test for voting eligibility in the South. It was later used to
justify drawing some congressional districts that would make the
architects of South Africa's apartheid blush. In 1995 Roberts and
Stratton authored "The New Color Line: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy
Democracy."
(WSJ, 10/26/95, p.A-20)(HFA, '96, p.36)(AP,
8/6/97)(HN, 8/6/98)
1965 Aug 6, Indian troops invaded
Pakistan. Indo-Pakistani fighting spread to Kashmir and to the Punjab,
The 2nd Indo-Pakistani conflict started without a formal declaration of
war. Skir-mishes with Indian forces started as early as August 6 or 7.
(http://ph.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0858805.html)(MC, 8/6/02)
1966 Aug 6, Demonstrations against
war in Vietnam become widespread throughout US.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1969 Aug 6, Theodor Adorno, German
philosopher, died of a heart attack. In 2008 Detlev Claussen authored
“Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius.”
(WSJ, 4/18/08, p.W5)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/adorno.htm)
1973 Aug 6, Fulgencio Batista y
Zaldivar (b.1901), former dictator Cuba (1940-58), died in Spain.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista)
1976 Aug 6, Gregor Piatigorsky
(b.1903), Russian cellist, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Piatigorsky)
1978 Aug 6, There was a bloodless
coup in Honduras.
(WUD, 199, p.1691)
1978 Aug 6, Pope Paul VI
(1963-78), born as Giovanni Montini, died at Castel Gandolfo at age 80.
(AP, 8/6/97)
1979 Aug 6, Paul Volcker (b.1927),
appointed by Pres. Carter, took over as the new chair of the US Federal
Reserve Board.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Volcker)
1986 Aug 6, William J. Schroeder
died after living 620 days with the "Jarvik 7" artificial heart.
(AP, 8/6/97)
1987 Aug 6, President Reagan's new
Central America peace initiative ran into problems as the United States
and Nicaragua openly disagreed on procedures for a negotiated
settlement.
(AP, 8/6/97)
1988 Aug 6, As many as 400
drowned in India when a ferry capsized in the Ganges River.
(AP, 2/3/06)
1988 Aug 6, Iraq's president said
his country would agree to a cease-fire with Iran, provided the
Iranians promised to hold direct talks immediately after the truce took
effect.
(AP, 8/6/98)
1989 Aug 6, "Oh! Calcutta!" closed
at Edison Theater in NYC after 5959 performances.
(www.totaltheater.com/referencialongrunsbroadwayResultList1.asp)
1989 Aug 6, Jaime Paz Zamora was
inaugurated as president of Bolivia.
(AP, 8/6/99)
1990 Aug 6, JonBenet Ramsey,
little beauty queen, was born. She was murdered in 1996 at her home in
Colorado.
(http://crime.about.com/od/unsolved/p/jonbenet_ramsey.htm)
1990 Aug 6, The UN Security
Council (Resolution 651) ordered a worldwide embargo on trade with Iraq
to punish the Baghdad regime for invading Kuwait.
(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A8)(NH, 9/96, p.14)(AP, 8/6/00)(SFC,
9/24/02, p.A12)
1990 Aug 6, Pakistan’s PM Benazir
Bhutto was ousted after 20 months in office by Pres. Ghu-lam Ishaq Khan
on charges of incompetence and corruption. An interim government was
led by Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi. It was later estimated that $1.5 billion
was received in bribes, kickbacks and commissions from a variety of
enterprises.
(SFC, 11/5/96, p.A9)(SFC, 8/20/98, p.B10)
1991 Aug 6, The US Justice
Department joined forces with the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue
in fighting a federal judge’s order to keep two abortion clinics in
Wichita, Kansas, open.
(AP, 8/6/01)
1991 Aug 6, Harry Reasoner (68),
TV newsman, died in Norwalk, Connecticut.
(AP, 8/6/01)
1992 Aug 6, Americans led by Carl
Lewis swept the long jump at the Barcelona Summer Olympics, while Kevin
Young won the 400-meter hurdles and Mike Marsh the 200 meters.
(AP, 8/6/97)
1992 Aug 6, President Bush granted
full diplomatic recognition to the former Yugoslav repub-lics of
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia and Croatia, the same day Britain's
Independent Televi-sion News showed videotape of emaciated detainees at
a pair of Serb prison camps.
(AP, 8/6/97)
1993 Aug 6, The U.S. Senate joined
the House in passing President Clinton's budget plan, 51-50, with a
tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President Al Gore.
(AP, 8/6/98)
1993 Aug 6, Louis Freeh won US
Senate confirmation to be director of the FBI.
(AP, 8/6/98)
1993 Aug 6, Morihiro Hosokawa was
elected the new prime minister of Japan by the country's lower house of
Parliament. The Liberal Democratic Party was ousted after ruling since
1955. Hosokawa had formed the Japan New Party in May 1992. It ruled for
only 8 months.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.B-13)(AP,
8/6/98)(Econ, 11/10/07, p.52)
1994 Aug 6, In Wedowee, Ala., an
apparent arson fire destroyed Randolph County High School. It had been
the focus of tensions over the principal's stand against interracial
dating.
(AP, 8/6/99)
1995 Aug 6, Thousands of people in
Hiroshima, Japan, set glowing lanterns afloat in rivers, capping a day
of tributes on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing.
(AP, 8/6/00)
1996 Aug 6, Officials announced
the Air Force had punished 16 officers in connection with the crash
that killed Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 34 others the previous
April.
(AP, 8/6/97)
1996 Aug 6, The US Naval Academy
at Annapolis expelled 15 midshipmen, 12 men and 3 women, for drug use
that included LSD and marijuana.
(SFC, 8/7/96, p.A3)
1996 Aug 6, GE Capital said it
would purchase First Colony in an $11 billion deal, one of the biggest
in the insurance industry.
(WSJ, 1/2/97, p.R2)
1996 Aug 6, NASA scientists
presented evidence that a meteorite from Mars (ALH 84001) that was
found in Antarctica in 1984 contained organic minerals such as
carbonate globules, magnetite, iron sulfide and polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons. In 2001 Imre Friedmann (1921-2007), extreme
microbiologist, led a team of researchers to study the same meteorite
and claimed conclusive evidence that Mars had been teeming with life
3.5 billion years ago. Re-searchers in 2007 said the organic material
in the rock was made by chemical reactions.
(SFC, 8/8/96, p.A6)(Econ, 6/30/07, p.96)(Econ,
12/15/07, p.90)
1997 Aug 6, The Dow Jones reached
an all-time high at 8,259.31.
(SFC, 8/16/97, p.A1)
1997 Aug 6, Ending years of
impassioned rivalry, Apple Computer and Microsoft agreed to share
technology in a deal giving Microsoft a stake in Apple's survival.
Microsoft announced that it would buy $150 million in non-voting Apple
stock.
(SFC, 8/7/97, p.A1)(AP, 8/6/98)
1997 Aug 6, The tobacco industry
was forced to release documents that indicated efforts to quash safety
research and revealed steps taken for protection against lawsuits.
(SFC, 8/7/97, p.A1)
1997 Aug 6, It was reported that
residents of 47 states faced warnings not to eat certain types of
freshwater fish due to pollution. The EPA said that some 2,200 fish
consumption advisories were in effect in the US and that 15% of the
nation’s lakes and 5% of the rivers were covered by the advisory.
(SFC, 8/7/97, p.A3)
1997 Aug 6, It was reported that
MWC480 is a young star in the constellation Taurus, 450 Light years
distant, with a gas-rich disk that looked like a "construction zone"
for new planets.
(SFC, 8/7/97, p.A11)
1997 Aug 6, It was reported that
scientists had created the genetic blueprint for Helicobacter pylori, a
bacterium responsible for stomach ulcers.
(SFC, 8/7/97, p.A11)
1997 Aug 6, Korean Air Flight 801
from Seoul, a Boeing 747-300 jumbo jet, crashed into a hillside a short
distance from Guam’s Agana International Airport killing 228 with 26
survivors. A programming glitch in the ground radar system was later
identified as a contributing factor but not the cause.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801)(WSJ, 4/8/99,
p.A1)(AP, 8/6/98)(WSJ, 11/13/01, p.A14)
1998 Aug 6, Monica Lewinsky
testified for 8 1/2 hours that she had a sexual affair with Pres.
Clinton before a federal grand jury.
(SFC, 8/7/98, p.A1)(AP, 8/6/99)
1998 Aug 6, The House Government
Reform and Oversight Committee voted to cite Attorney General Janet
Reno for contempt of Congress for her refusal to turn over reports
recommend-ing that she seek an independent counsel to investigate
campaign fund-raising.
(AP, 8/6/99)
1998 Apr 6, Tammy Wynette (55),
country singer, died at her Nashville, Tenn., home. Her songs included
the 1968 hit "Stand by Your Man." In 2000 Jackie Daly authored the
biography "Tammy Wynette."
(SFC, 4/798, p.A7)(AP, 4/6/99)(WSJ, 6/2/00, p.W10)
1998 Aug 6, Rebels in Congo seized
control of Moanda, an important oil depot.
(SFC, 8/7/98, p.A14)
1998 Aug 6, NATO set exercises in
Albania for Aug 17-22 to show force against the Serb of-fensive in
Kosovo.
(WSJ, 8/7/98, p.A1)
1998 Aug 6, In Russia tax
collectors raided three biggest oil companies and demanded pay-ment of
over $150 million in unpaid taxes.
(SFC, 8/8/98, p.A13)
1999 Aug 6, Tony Gwynn became the
22nd major leaguer to reach three-thousand hits.
(AP, 8/6/00)
1999 Aug 6, In Canton, Texas, a
jury awarded Debbie Lovett (36) $23 million for heart-valve problems
that she blamed on the diet drug combination fen-phen in the first such
lawsuit to reach a jury. The case was settled for less than a tenth of
that amount during an appeal.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A3)(AP, 8/6/00)
1999 Aug 6, Violence in Kashmir
left 32 dead.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A12)
1999 Aug 6, In Poland the 5th free
Station Woodstock rock festival was held in Zary with an estimated
200,000 people in attendance.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, p.A22)
1999 Aug 6, In Russia soldiers on
2 bases opened fire on comrades and 8 people were killed.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A12)
1999 Aug 6, In Serbia Pres.
Milosevic addressed the Diaspora 99 conference in an effort to get
financial support from wealthy Serb émigrés. The economy
was reported to have suffered $30 billion in damages from 11 weeks of
war, but not much in assistance was forthcoming.
(WSJ, 8/9/99, p.A14)
2000 Aug 6,
Workers at Verizon, the nation’s largest local telephone company, went
on an 18-day strike over working conditions and union representation.
(AP, 8/6/01)
2000 Aug 6, In Burundi Hutu rebels
ambushed a truck carrying military cadets and 28 soldiers and 6
civilians were killed near Nyabiraba village.
(SFC, 8/8/00, p.A12)
2000 Aug 6, In Colombia rightist
paramilitary killed 6 men in Vilanueva.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A14)
2000 Aug 6, In Nigeria an
overcrowded boat capsized on the Atlantic coast near the Camer-oon
border and at least 40 people drowned. 42 survived.
(SFC, 8/8/00, p.A12)
2000 Aug 6, In San Juan, Puerto
Rico, thousands rallied to protest new US military exercises on Vieques.
(SFC, 8/7/00, p.A3)
2000 Aug 6, Russian officials
reported that scores of rebels were killed in weekend artillery attacks
outside Grozny, Chechnya, following warnings of a possible rebel
offensive. As many as 160 insurgents were reported killed.
(SFC, 8/7/00, p.A12)(SFC, 8/8/00, p.A12)
2001 Aug 6, Former Pres. Clinton
signed an agreement with Knopf to publish his memoirs for an advance of
over $10 million.
(SFC, 8/7/01, p.A1)
2001 Aug 6, US intelligence told
Pres. Bush that al Qaeda might try to hijack American planes. The
document "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" was presented to Bush
while he was on vacation in Crawford, Texas.
(SFC, 5/17/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/9/04, p.A3)(SSFC,
4/11/04, p.A1)
2001 Aug 6, Hurricane Barry hit
the Florida Panhandle along with parts of Alabama and Georgia.
(SFC, 8/6/01, p.A5)
2001 Aug 6, In Bolivia Pres.
Banzer stepped down form office. Vice Pres. Jorge Quiroga (41) assumed
the office.
(SFC, 8/7/01, p.A7)
2001 Aug 6, Jorge Amado, author of
32 novels, died at age 88. He was considered Brazil’s greatest
contemporary writer.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.D2)
2001 Aug 6, In India’s Madras
state a fire at the Badshaw asylum in Erwady killed 27 patients, many
of who were chained to their beds.
(SFC, 8/7/01, p.A6)(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A9)
2001 Aug 6, In Indonesia 2 men,
Rolan and Noval, were arrested for the murder of justice Syafiuddin
Kartasasmita. They said Tommy Suharto paid them for the murder.
(SFC, 8/8/01, p.A8)
2001 Aug 6, The IRA announced a
method of destroying its arsenal that raised hopes for a peace accord
in Northern Ireland.
(SFC, 8/7/01, p.A1)
2001 Aug 6, In Macedonia peace
talks hit a snag over government demands for a quick rebel disarmament.
(SFC, 8/7/01, p.A6)
2001 Aug 6, General Duong Van
"Big" Minh (86), who was the president of South Vietnam for just a few
days before the country fell to Communist invaders in 1975, died in
Pasadena, Calif.
(AP, 8/6/02)
2002 Aug 6, President Bush signed
legislation restoring broad trade negotiating authority to US
presidents. Bush signed the Trade Adjustment Assistance Reform Act
(TAA) offering wage insurance to any trade displaced worker over 50.
(AP,
8/6/03)(www.doleta.gov/tradeact/2002act_index.cfm)(Econ, 1/20/07, p.34)
2002 Aug 6, Surgeons in LA
completed a 22-hour operation on Guatemalan twins, Maria de Jesus Quiej
Alvarez and sister Maria Teresa, joined at their heads. UCLA doctors
donated their services in the $1.5 million operation. They returned to
Guatemala Jan 13, 2003.
(SFC, 8/7/02, p.A1)(SFC, 8/8/02, p.A3)(SFC, 2/7/03,
p.A12)
2002 Aug 6, In northeastern Congo
fighting began between rebels and tribesmen for control of Bunia, an
important trading center, and killed at least 48 people, mostly
civilians.
(AP, 8/10/02)
2002 Aug 6, In eastern India 20
people were feared drowned when a boat overturned in Bihar state.
(SFC, 8/7/02, p.A12)
2002 Aug 6, In Jakarta, Indonesia,
thousands of protesters stormed parliament to demand constitutional
reforms including direct presidential elections.
(SFC, 8/7/02, p.A12)
2002 Aug 6, Israeli troops killed
the suspected mastermind of a Tel Aviv suicide bombing, while U.S.
diplomats said the United States was considering moving consular
offices out of tra-ditionally Arab east Jerusalem due to security
concerns.
(AP, 8/6/02)
2002 Aug 6, Israel agreed to buy
about 1.75 billion cubic feet of water from Turkey annually for the
next 20 years to alleviate the nation's growing water shortage and
ensure the success of an arms deal with Ankara.
(AP, 8/602)
2002 Aug 6, In Kashmir suspected
Islamic militant lobbed a grenade and opened fire on a group of Hindu
pilgrims 175 miles north of Jammu.
(SFC, 8/6/02, p.A7)
2002 Aug 6, In western Mexico the
brakes apparently failed on a 26-year-old bus before it plowed through
a highway toll booth and slammed into a concrete wall, killing at least
33 peo-ple, 10 of them children, headed for a re-enactment of the Last
Supper. About 20 people were injured.
(AP, 8/6/02)
2002 Aug 6, U.N. officials said
over 24,000 Sudanese refugees will be moved out of northern Uganda due
to rebel attacks. A Ugandan army spokesman raised the death toll in the
attack to 23 people.
(AP, 8/6/02)
2003 Aug 6, Arnold Schwarzenegger
on The Tonight Show told Jay Leno and a national TV audience of his
candidacy to replace Gray Davis as governor of California. Hours later,
Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante said he was entering the recall race as well.
(SFC, 8/7/03, p.A1)(AP, 8/6/04)
2003 Aug 6, Roberto Marinho (98),
who turned his father's O Globo newspaper into a media empire and
became one of Brazil's richest men, died.
(AP, 8/7/03)(SFC, 8/9/03, p.A14)
2003 Aug 6, Israel freed 334
Palestinian prisoners in a bid to jump-start peace efforts, but the
gesture fell flat among Palestinians.
(AP, 8/6/04)
2003 Aug 6, Record-breaking heat,
already blamed for three dozen deaths, continued to tor-ment Europe.
(AP, 8/6/04)
2004 Aug 6, Louisiana’s Democrat
Rep. Rodney Alexander (57) switched party affiliations and filed as a
Republican 30 minutes before a deadline.
(SFC, 8/13/04, p.A4)
2004 Aug 6, US payroll data fell
far short of expectations and sent the US and British markets crashing
to the floor. New July jobs totaled 32,000. The Dow plunged 147 points
to a new 2004 low of 9815.33.
(AP, 8/6/04)(SFC, 8/7/04, p.C1)(WSJ, 8/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Aug 6, In Deltona, Fla., 4
men and two women were found slain in a home after one of them failed
to show up for an early morning shift at a nearby Burger King. A man
who was an-gry about a suspected theft recruited three teenagers to
stab and beat six people to death with baseball bats.
(AP, 8/6/04)(AP, 8/8/04)
2004 Aug 6, Rick James (56), Funk
legend born as James A. Johnson, died. He was best known for the 1981
hit "Super Freak" before his career disintegrated amid drug use and
vio-lence that sent him to prison.
(AP, 8/6/04)(SFC, 8/7/04, p.B7)
2004 Aug 6, In Afghanistan gunmen
ambushed a convoy carrying election workers into a re-mote Taliban
stronghold, killing two of them.
(AP, 8/7/04)
2004 Aug 6-2004 Aug 8, Up to
100,000 rock and rollers crowded a remote desert venue in China's
isolated Ningxia province over the weekend for a three-day festival
featuring the na-tion's oldest and best bands.
(AP, 8/9/04)
2004 Aug 6, A German court found 2
former top East German officials guilty of failing to stop the killing
of people trying to escape across the Berlin Wall and sentenced them to
probation.
(AP, 8/6/05)
2004 Aug 6, Abdul Karim Rawi, gov.
of Iraq’s Anbar province, resigned under pressure from insurgents who
had kidnapped his 3 sons.
(SFC, 8/7/04, p.A13)
2004 Aug 6, There was intense
fighting in Najaf. The U.S. military said 300 militants were killed in
the past two days. Assailants in Iraq killed 3 US servicemen, one in
the capital and two in the south.
(AP, 8/6/04)(AP, 8/7/04)
2004 Aug 6, Israel reopened a
border crossing with Egypt, closed since July 18, enabling some 2,000
stranded Palestinians to return home.
(SFC, 8/7/04, p.A11)
2004 Aug 6, Mali said swarms of
locusts had spread across most of its vast arid territory. The swarms
were moving across the Sahara desert toward countries including
Senegal, Niger, Chad and Gambia.
(AP, 8/6/04)
2004 Aug 6, Reuters learned from
Pakistani intelligence sources that computer expert Mohammad Naeem Noor
Khan, arrested secretly in July, was working under cover to help the
authorities track down al Qaeda militants in Britain and the United
States when his name ap-peared in U.S. newspapers.
(Reuters, 8/7/04)(SFC, 8/10/04, p.A1)
2004 Aug 6, U.S. officials
returned $20 million in embezzled Peruvian government funds that had
been deposited in American banks under the direction of fallen spy
chief Vladimiro Mon-tesinos.
(AP, 8/6/04)
2004 Aug 6, Saudi officials
reported the capture of Faris Ahmed Jamaan al-Showeel al Zah-rani, No.
12 on their list of 26 most wanted terrorism suspects.
(SFC, 8/7/04, p.A10)
2004 Aug 6, Yemeni warplanes and
artillery pounded mountain hideouts of an anti-U.S. leader and his
followers in a major offensive aimed at ending a six-week conflict that
has killed at least 500 people.
(AP, 8/6/04)
2005 Aug 6, Anti-war activist
Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier-son, Casey, was killed in Iraq, began a
weeks-long protest outside President Bush's ranch in Texas.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2005 Aug 6, Robin Cook (59),
former British Foreign Secretary, who quit Prime Minister Tony Blair's
Cabinet in 2003 to protest the Iraq war, died after collapsing on a
Scottish mountain while walking with his wife.
(AP, 8/6/05)(Econ, 8/13/05, p.75)
2005 Aug 6-2005 Aug 7, In Sao
Paulo, Brazil, thieves tunneled 260 feet to a Central Bank vault and
stole some $70 million, in what has been described as the biggest such
robbery ever in Brazil. On Feb 25, 2008, police arrested Antonio
Jussivan Alves dos Santos, the leader of the thieving gang. In
March he was sentenced to nearly 50 years in jail.
(AP, 8/8/05)(AP, 3/6/08)
2005 Aug 6, In Central African
Republic an overloaded boat carrying hundreds of people has sunk on a
river, and at least 13 people were reported dead and dozens more
missing.
(AP, 8/9/05)
2005 Aug 6-2005 Aug 8, Tropical
Storm Matsa hit China’s eastern province of Zhejiang. 13 people were
killed since it hit the mainland as a typhoon. Beijing's Municipal
Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters was preparing to evacuate
as many as 40,000 people in the mountains north of Beijing as Tropical
Storm Matsa approached.
(AP, 8/9/05)
2005 Aug 6, Ibrahim Ferrer Planas,
Cuban singer, died. In 1996 he recorded with Ry Cooder for the "Buena
Vista Social Club" which was followed by his own solo album.
(Econ, 8/20/05, p.68)
2005 Aug 6-2005 Aug 14, Helsinki,
Finland, hosted the 10th IAAF World Championships. The International
Amateur Athletic Federation was founded in 1912 by 17 national athletic
federa-tions who saw the need for a governing authority, for an
athletic program, for standardized technical equipment and world
records.
(www.helsinki2005.fi/index.php?&Lang=eng)
2005 Aug 6, India airlifted tons
of food and medicines to Manipur where tribesmen campaign-ing for a
separate homeland have blocked roads and cut off supplies for nearly 2
months. Naga tribesmen living in Manipur began the blockade on June 19,
leading to a severe shortage of food and fuel in the state's capital
Imphal.
(AP, 8/6/05)
2005 Aug 6, India and Pakistan
agreed to set up a telephone hotline to prevent accidental nu-clear
conflict and also agreed to notify each other before testing ballistic
missiles.
(AP, 8/7/05)
2005 Aug 6, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
was sworn in as Iran's president, saying he wants peaceful relations
with the world but rejecting outside pressure to change course.
(AP, 8/6/05)
2005 Aug 6, Iran rejected Europe's
proposal for ending the standoff over Tehran's nuclear program, saying
it was "unacceptable" because it did not give the country the right to
enrich uranium.
(AP, 8/6/05)
2005 Aug 6, Sunni Arab members of
the committee drafting Iraq's new constitution rejected Kurdish demands
for a federal state.
(AP, 8/6/05)
2005 Aug 6, In Iraq a US patrol
with Task Force Liberty was hit in the city of Samarra. All the
soldiers were transported to a coalition medical facility where two of
them died from wounds.
(AP, 8/7/05)
2005 Aug 6, Leonardo Rodriguez
Alcaine (b.1919), Mexican trade union leader and a long-serving
legislator of the Revolutionary Institutional Party, died. He presided
over the Workers' Confederation of Mexico (CTM) from July 21, 1997
until his death.
(Econ, 11/12/05,
p.39)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Alcaine)
2005 Aug 6, Palestinian judges and
lawyers shut down the Palestinian legal system until fur-ther notice to
protest recent attacks against senior legal officials.
(AP, 8/6/05)
2005 Aug 6, In Turkey Lu'ai Sakra,
a Syrian with links to al-Qaida, was arrested for plotting to slam
speedboats packed with explosives into cruise ships filled with Israeli
tourists.
(AP, 8/11/05)
2005 Aug 6, A Tunis Air jet
carrying 35 passengers went down in the sea off the Sicilian coast, and
rescuers were on their way. 16 people were killed, while 23 survived. A
bad fuel gauge on the Tuninter plane caused the crash. On March 23,
2009, the Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency
measures before crash-landing his plane, was sen-tenced to 10 years in
jail by an Italian court along with his co-pilot. Another five
employees of Tuninter, a subsidiary of Tunisair, were sentenced to
between 8 and 9 years in jail.
(AP, 8/5/05)(AP, 8/7/05)(WSJ, 9/8/05, p.A1)(Reuters,
3/24/09)
2006 Aug 6, Oil giant BP announced
an indefinite shutdown of the biggest oilfield in the US, at Prudhoe
Bay in Alaska, after finding a pipeline leak. BP was able to maintain
partial operations.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2006 Aug 6, Walt Disney World
hiked ticket prices for the second time in 2006, raising the cost of a
basic one-day, one-park admission to $67, according to a pricing chart
posted on the company's media Web site.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Scientists said a
recurring "dead zone" of low-oxygen water off the Oregon coast is
larger than in previous years and may be triggered by global warming.
They concluded that it is being caused by explosive blooms of tiny
plants known as phytoplankton, which die and sink to the bottom, then
are eaten by bacteria which use up the oxygen in the water.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In Afghanistan 4
suspected Taliban killed two police using rocket-propelled gre-nades
and heavy machine guns at a checkpoint in Murghab district in western
Badghis prov-ince. A suspected suicide bomber in a small truck hit a
military convoy outside Kandahar, wounding at least one foreign
soldier. A British soldier was killed in Helmand province.
(AP, 8/6/06)(SFC, 8/7/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 6, Bolivia’s President
Evo Morales officially opened a Constituent Assembly to re-write the
nation's constitution.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In Burundi gunmen
hurled a grenade at a bar frequented by army officers, killing four
people. Authorities said the attack was an attempt to undermine the
government.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, Cambodian customs over
the weekend seized 12 luxury vehicles stolen in Can-ada, including a
Hummer and a Cadillac popular with hip-hop music stars, giving an
intriguing insight into the world of international car smuggling.
(Reuters, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, In China an explosion
aboard a bus in Hunan province's Guiyang county killed eight people,
just days after a similar explosion killed 11. Fatal explosions aboard
public buses in recent years have been blamed on both bomb attacks and
accidents with gas canisters and other dangerous cargo.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, A former official of
Egypt's Gama'a Islamiya said that even if some members of the Islamist
group had joined al Qaeda it was unlikely that most would.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In eastern Ethiopia
over 250 people were killed by flooding in Dire Dawa. As many as 300
remained missing.
(Reuters, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 6, Hong Kong's
legislature passed a law regulating phone tapping and other
surveil-lance measures, a move critics fear will curtail civil
liberties in the former British colony now ruled by China.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In India a boat
capsized in a rain-swollen river near New Delhi, leaving 3 people dead
and 27 others missing as the nationwide death toll from the monsoon
rose to at least 359.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, It was reported that
illegal logging in Indonesia’s Aceh province had risen to re-cord
levels as people reached into virgin forests to rebuild some 130,000
homes destroyed in December, 2004, tsunami. Deforestation across
Indonesia had already led to a 40% loss in the last 50 years.
(SSFC, 8/6/06, p.A20)
2006 Aug 6, Iran's top nuclear
negotiator said that Iran will expand uranium enrichment, in defiance
of a UN Security Council resolution giving the Islamic Republic until
Aug. 31 to halt the activity or face the threat of political and
economic sanctions.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In Iraq 3 US soldiers
were killed in a roadside bombing southwest of Baghdad.
(AFP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, Israeli forces
arrested the speaker of the Palestinian parliament at his house in the
West Bank, and pressed their monthlong offensive in Gaza against Hamas.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Hezbollah guerrillas
unleashed their deadliest barrage of rockets yet into north-ern Israel,
killing 12 reservists at a staging area. Israeli bombardment killed at
least 25 people in southern Lebanon as fighting only intensified
despite a draft UN cease-fire resolution. Hez-bollah rockets crashed
into Haifa, killing at least three people and wounding more than 40.
(AP, 8/6/06)(SFC, 8/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 6, In Kyrgyzstan Imam
Mokhammadrafik Kamalov (53) was killed in the city of Osh along with
two suspected Islamic radicals during an operation to track down men
suspected of attacking Kyrgyz and Tajik border posts in May, killing
nine people.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 6, In Scotland the Fringe
Festival kicked off when an estimated 100,000-strong crowd turned out
on the streets of Edinburgh to watch a parade by 3,000 performers from
the Fringe and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.
(AFP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, A government spokesman
said Somalia's top interim leaders have agreed to end a rift
threatening the fragile administration after crisis talks led by Seyoum
Mesfin, Ethiopia's foreign affairs minister.
(Reuters, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Crews fought more than
20 forest fires in northern Spain and stopped blazes from advancing
into two historic towns. The fires killed three people and destroyed
thousands of acres of woodland. Authorities said most of the blazes
were deliberately set.
(AP, 8/6/06)(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, Sri Lanka rejected
peace broker Norway's deal with Tamil Tiger rebels to lift a water
blockade at the root of the latest bloodshed that has claimed at least
425 lives.
(AFP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Taiwan condemned China
after oil producer Chad switched diplomatic ties to Beijing from
Taipei, forcing Premier Su Tseng-chang to scrap his plans to visit the
African na-tion at the last minute.
(Reuters, 8/6/06)
2007 Aug 6, President Bush wrapped
up two days of talks with Afghan President Hamid Kar-zai at Camp David.
Bush and Karzai ruled out making any concessions to the Taliban
militants during their 2-day meeting at Camp David.
(AP, 8/7/07)(AP, 8/6/08)
2007 Aug 6, A US federal judge in
LA barred the Navy from using underwater sonar blasts for
anti-submarine tests off California’s Channel Islands, due to potential
harm to 30 species of ma-rine mammals including 5 species of endangered
whales.
(SFC, 8/7/07, p.D2)
2007 Aug 6, In Utah 6 coal miners
were trapped by a cave-in more than 1,500 feet below the surface at the
Crandall Canyon Mine.
(AP, 8/7/07)(SFC, 8/18/07, p.A3)
2007 Aug 6, American Home Mortgage
Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection, the latest casu-alty of a
mortgage industry that has plunged into distress.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, Cerberus Capital
Management LP named Robert Nardelli, former CEO of Home Depot, to lead
its newly acquired Chrysler unit.
(WSJ, 8/6/07, p.A1)
2007 Aug 6, Wal-Mart signed an
agreement to start wholesale operations in India in equal partnership
with Bharti Enterprises, an Indian conglomerate.
(Econ, 8/11/07, p.59)
2007 Aug 6, Montana was under a
state of emergency as firefighters battled several huge blazes.
Residents near a state park on Michigan's Upper Peninsula were ordered
to evacuate as another wildfire spread there.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, Militants attacked
police at a checkpoint in Zabul province, and the ensuing clash left
five suspected militants dead. Militants attacked a police vehicle just
outside Kandahar city, killing two officers and wounding eight others.
Dutch soldiers fatally shot a motorcyclist who ap-proached their convoy
and failed to heed warning signals and shots.
(AP, 8/7/07)
2007 Aug 6, The European
Commission announced a formal EU-wide import ban on meat and livestock
from the British mainland following the outbreak there of foot and
mouth disease. The outbreak halted British animal movement and the
export ban was estimated to be costing the British meat industry some
£10 million a week.
(AP, 8/6/07)(Econ, 8/11/07, p.45)
2007 Aug 6, Independence hero
Xanana Gusmao was named East Timor's new prime minis-ter, triggering
fresh violence in the capital.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, Baron Elie Robert de
Rothschild (90), who helped France's renowned Rothschild winemaking and
banking dynasty recover from the ravages of World War II, died while
vaca-tioning at his Austrian hunting lodge.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, Iran's leading
reformist newspaper was shut down for the second time in a year after
publishing an interview with a poet who called for greater gender
equality.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, Iranian and US
diplomats held "frank and serious" expert-level talks in Baghdad on
security issues in Iraq.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, Iraq's political
crisis worsened as five ministers loyal to former Iraqi leader Ayad
Allawi announced a boycott of Cabinet meetings. A suicide bomber
slammed his truck into a densely populated residential area in the
northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, killing at least 28 peo-ple, including
19 children. 4 US soldiers were killed in a blast that also wounded 11
in Diyala province. One US soldier was killed and another wounded when
their vehicle was targeted by an armor-piercing explosively formed
penetrator in a western section of Baghdad. A British sol-dier died
from injuries sustained in a gunbattle in Basra.
(AP, 8/6/07)(AP, 8/7/07)
2007 Aug 6, Ehud Olmert became the
first Israeli PM to visit a Palestinian town since the out-break of
fighting seven years ago, meeting under heavy guard with Palestinian
President Mah-moud Abbas to talk about the creation of a Palestinian
state.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, Lebanon’s government
said that police have killed Abu Hureira, the deputy com-mander of
al-Qaida inspired militants. He was killed a few days ago by police in
the northern port city of Tripoli, near the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp
where Fatah Islam militants have been fighting Lebanese soldiers for
more than two months.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, Nigerian police said
that they have arrested 17 people over the past two months on suspicion
of carrying out kidnappings in the oil-rich south of the country. At
least 17 people were killed in flooding in central Nigeria's Plateau
state while more than 200 houses were washed away.
(AP, 8/6/07)(AP, 8/7/07)
2007 Aug 6, A Moscow court
convicted Alexei Pichugin, former top security officer with the
dismantled Yukos oil company in the deaths of 3 people, sentencing him
to life in prison in a re-trial. Russia deployed new air defense
systems capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, and the air force
chief said the weapon could be used to protect 2014 Winter Olympics in
the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
(AP, 8/6/07)(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, South Africa stated
its readiness to assist Guinea Bissau in tackling drug traffick-ing as
the tiny west African nation has been used as a transit hub for
European-bound cocaine.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, In Tanzania Darfur's
rebel groups concluded four days of talks by agreeing on a common
platform to soon enter final peace negotiations with the Sudanese
government.
(AFP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, PM Surayud Chulanont
said Thailand will return some 8,000 ethnic Hmong refu-gees to Laos
despite their claims that they face persecution in their homeland.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, Vietnam’s disaster
officials said the worst tropical storm to hit the country so far this
year has killed nine people, while 14 others remain missing.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 6, Zimbabwe police said
at least 7,600 shop managers and business executives have been arrested
in a crackdown on businesses accused of profiteering, as President
Robert Mugabe vowed to continue the blitz.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2008 Aug 6, President George W.
Bush flew into Bangkok on the latest leg of a pre-Olympics Asian tour,
although his focus in Thailand is mainly on the "outpost of tyranny"
junta in neighboring Myanmar.
(AP, 8/6/08)
2008 Aug 6, The US said it will
protest to China over its decision to revoke the visa of Olympic gold
medalist Joey Cheek, an activist on the African region of Darfur where
China is accused of failing to help end the crisis. Speedskater Cheek
is co-founder of Team Darfur, an international coalition of athletes
campaigning to draw world attention to the humanitarian crisis there.
(Reuters, 8/6/08)
2008 Aug 6, A jury of six military
officers at Guantanamo Bay reached a split verdict in the war crimes
trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden,
clearing him of some charges but convicting him of others that could
send him to prison for life. Hamdan was convicted of supporting
terrorism but acquitted of conspiracy to commit attacks. The next day
the US military jury sentenced Hamdan to 5 1/2 years in prison,
including five years and a month already served at Guantanamo Bay.
(AP, 8/6/08)(WSJ, 8/7/08, p.A1)(AP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 6, A Bulgarian court
declared the Kremikovtzi steel plant to be insolvent. Ukrainian
billionaire Kostyantin Zhevago and Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal SA
competed to take over the plant operations following the insolvency
proceedings.
(WSJ, 8/7/08, p.B2)
2008 Aug 6, Officials said
Cambodia's genocide tribunal has been hit by new corruption
alle-gations, compelling foreign donors to withhold more than $300,000
from the proceedings pend-ing a review of the claims.
(AP, 8/6/08)
2008 Aug 6, China announced
changes to its foreign exchange rules to address surging growth in its
hard currency reserves.
(WSJ, 8/7/08, p.C12)
2008 Aug 6, France accused Rwanda
of making "unacceptable accusations" by alleging Paris played an active
role in the 1994 genocide, but said it was still determined to mend
damaged ties with Kigali.
(AP, 8/6/08)
2008 Aug 6, In Indian Kashmir a
Hindu protester was shot dead in army firing as Premier Manmohan Singh
was due to hold talks with political parties in a bid to defuse
tensions in the region.
(AP, 8/6/08)
2008 Aug 6, Israel released five
Palestinian teenagers from jail as part of a prisoner exchange
agreement made with Lebanon's Hezbollah militia last month.
(AP, 8/6/08)
2008 Aug 6, Army officers in
Mauritania, upset with government overtures toward Islamic hard-liners,
staged a coup overthrowing the first government to be freely elected in
more than 20 years. President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi was held at
his palace in Nouakchott by presi-dential guard soldiers, led by
Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz. Arab-dominated Mauritania, with a population of
3.4 million, has been wracked by more than 10 coups or attempted coups
since independence from France in 1960.
(AP, 8/6/08)(Econ, 8/9/08, p.44)
2008 Aug 6, In Nepal a contest to
choose the next "Miss Nepal," slated August 7, was can-celled after
Maoist female lawmakers denounced the beauty pageant.
(AFP, 8/6/08)
2008 Aug 6, Pakistani Pres. Pervez
Musharraf abruptly canceled then reinstated his trip to the Olympic
Games as local media reported that the ruling coalition had agreed on
steps to remove him. 9 militants including Ali Bakht, a top-ranking
militant, were killed and many injured during a search and cordon
operation conducted by security forces in the Kabal district of the
Swat val-ley. Two insurgents died when the explosive device they were
planting in a female educational institution exploded prematurely in
Kabal sub-district. 3 civilians died in the various parts of the Swat
district when stray mortar rounds hit their houses. An attack on a
Pakistani military check-post by some 200 pro-Taliban militants
triggered intense fighting that killed 25 insurgents and two
paramilitary soldiers near the Afghan border.
(AFP, 8/6/08)(http://tinyurl.com/6bwtwo)(AP, 8/7/08)
2008 Aug 6, Thousands protested in
South Africa as workers disrupted gold mining and other major
industries in a national strike over price hikes rattling the
continent's economic power-house.
(AP, 8/6/08)
2008 Aug 6, Taiwan's President Ma
Ying-jeou declassified documents allegedly implicating his predecessor
Chen Shui-bian in a high-profile embezzlement case.
(AP, 8/6/08)
2008 Aug 6, Riot police used tear
gas as they blocked hundreds of Venezuelans protesting what they call
new moves by President Hugo Chavez to concentrate his power.
(AP, 8/7/08)
2008 Aug 6, Zimbabwe's ruling
ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC called on their supporters to end
political violence in the country. A newspaper reported that President
Robert Mugabe would have amnesty from prosecution and a ceremonial role
in government under a draft set-tlement to resolve the country's crisis.
(Reuters, 8/6/08)(AFP, 8/6/08)
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