Today in History - April 7
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924 Apr 7, Berengarius I, Emperor of Italy, was murdered.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1028 Apr 7, Pope Benedict VIII died.
(PTA, 1980, p.288)
1118 Apr 7, Pope Gelasius II excommunicated Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1348 Apr 7, Prague Univ., the 1st in central Europe, was started by Charles IV.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1498 Apr 7, A crowd stormed Savonarola's convent of San Marco in Florence, Italy.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1506 Apr 7, Francis Xavier, saint, Jesuit missionary to India, Malaya, and Japan, was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1521 Apr 7, Inquisitor-general Adrian Boeyens banned Lutheran books.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1521 Apr 7, Ferdinand Magellan landed on Cebu Island, Philippines. Italian chronicler Antonio Pigafetta reported a thriving port with large supplies of rice and gold. In 2003 the island was a booming commercial center with a population of 4 million.
(WSJ, 10/15/03, p.B2A)
1534 Apr 7, Josr de Anchieta, Spanish Jesuit, missionary (Brazilian Tupi Indians), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1613 Apr 7, Gerard Dou, Dutch painter (Night School), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1614 Apr 7, El Greco (b.1541), born in Crete as Domenikos Theotocopoulos, died in Toledo, Spain. His paintings included "The Resurrection" (1597) and “View and Plan of Toledo" (1610-1614).
(WSJ, 6/18/01, p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Greco)
1625 Apr 7, Albrecht von Wallenstein was appointed German supreme commander.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1645 Apr 7, Michael Cardozo became the 1st Jewish lawyer in Brazil.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1652 Apr 7, The Dutch established settlement at Cape Town, South Africa.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1712 Apr 7, There was a slave revolt in New York City. A slave insurrection in New York City was suppressed by the militia and ended with the execution of 21 blacks. [see Jul 4]
(HN, 4/7/97)(HNQ, 6/10/98)
1719 Apr 7, Jean-Baptiste de la Salle (67), French priest, explorer, saint, died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1724 Apr 7, Johann S. Bach's "St. John Passion" premiered in Leipzig.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1763 Apr 7, Domenico Dragonetti, composer, was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1768 Apr 7, Michel Mathieu (78), composer, died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1770 Apr 7, William Wordsworth, English poet laureate, was born. He wrote "The Prelude" and "Lyrical Ballads." In 1998 Kenneth R. Johnston published “The Hidden Wordsworth: Poet, Lover, Rebel, Spy." The biography covered the first 30 years of the poet’s life. In 1896 Emile Legouis also published a biography of the poet’s youth. The poet was responsible for such phrases as: “love of nature," “love of man," and “emotion recollected in tranquility."
(V.D.-H.K.p.230)(WSJ, 6/23/98, p.A18)(SFEC, 8/23/98, BR p.5)(HN, 4/7/99)
1775 Apr 7, Francis C. Lowell was born. He founded the 1st raw cotton-to-cloth textile mill.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1794 Apr 7, In Poland at the battle of Raclawice the revolutionary forces of Tadeusz Kosciusko defeated the imperial armies.
(DrEE, 9/21/96, p.5)
1795 Apr 7, In the National Convention of Revolutionary France put into effect a new calendar system, similar to that of ancient Egypt. The year began with the autumn equinox, and had 360 days divided into twelve months of thirty days. Five extra days were placed at the end of the year. The months were divided into three 10 day groups. The day was divided into 10 new hours, each hour into 100 minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds.
(K.I.-365D, p.42)
1798 Apr 7, Territory of Mississippi was organized.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1803 Apr 7, Francois D. Toussaint L'Ouverture (Louverture), Haitian revolutionary, died in a dungeon at Fort Joux in the French Alps. In 2007 Madison Smartt Bell authored “Toussaint Louverture: A Biography."
(AP, 4/7/03)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_L'Ouverture)(SFC, 1/15/07, p.D7)
1805 Apr 7, Francis Wilkinson Pickens (d.1869), later Confederate governor of South Carolina, was born in South Carolina.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Wilkinson_Pickens)
1805 Apr 7, The Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery resumed their journey to the headwaters of the Missouri River.
(ON, 4/12, p.10)
1805 Apr 7, Beethoven conducted the fist public performance of his Third Symphony, "Eroica." It was completed in 1804 and 1st published in Vienna.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_(Beethoven))(Econ., 11/21/20, p.76)
1818 Apr 7, Gen. Andrew Jackson captured St. Marks, Fla., from the Seminole Indians.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1827 Apr 7, English chemist John Walker invented wooden matches.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1831 Apr 7, Pedro I of Brazil abdicated in favor of his 5-year-old son, Pedro de Alcantara, Pedro II.
(EWH, 4th ed., p.855)
1837 Apr 7, J. Pierpont Morgan (J.P. Morgan, d.1913), American financier, was born in Hartford, Conn. He later owned U.S. Steel and International Harvester. In 1999 Jean Strouse published the biography "Morgan: American Financier."
(WUD, 1994 p.931)(WSJ, 3/30/99, p.A24)(HN, 4/7/99)
1853 Apr 7, Dr. John Snow administered chloroform to Queen Victoria at the birth of her 8th child, Prince Leopold.
(ON, 5/05, p.9)
1858 Apr 7, Anton Diabelli (76), Austrian publisher, composer, died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1859 Apr 7, Walter Camp, father of American football, was born in Connecticut.
(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1860 Apr 7, William Keith Kellogg, the brother of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943), was born. Will later founded the W.K. Kellogg company in Battle Creek, Mich., to market the cornflakes invented by his older brother. [see 1895]
(HN, 4/7/99)(http://www.ivu.org/history/adventists/kellogg.html)(WSJ, 9/29/00, p.W17)
1862 Apr 7, Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee. Gen. Ulysses Grant after the Battle of Shiloh said: “I saw an open field... so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across... in any direction, stepping on dead bodies without a foot touching the ground." More than 9,000 Americans died.
(SFC, 6/19/96, p.E5)(HT, 4/97, p.13)(AP, 4/7/97)
1863 Apr 7, Battle of Charleston, SC. The Federal fleet attack on Fort Sumter failed.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1865 Apr 7, Battle of Farmville, VA.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1888 Apr 7, Start of Sherlock Holmes adventure "Yellow Face."
(MC, 4/7/02)
1890 Apr 7, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, environmentalist (1st Lady of Everglades), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1891 Apr 7, Nebraska introduced an 8 hour work day.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1891 Apr 7, Phineas T. Barnum (88), US circus promoter (B & Bailey), died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1893 Apr 7, Allan W. Dulles, US diplomat, CIA head (1953-61) (Germany's Underground), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1897 Apr 7, Walter Winchell, American newscaster and newspaper columnist, was born in Harlem, NYC.
(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1902 Apr 7, The Texas Fuel Co. was founded. It soon changed its name to the Texas Co. and eventually became Texaco.
(SFC, 10/20/04, p.C6)
1908 Apr 7, Percy Faith, conductor (Summer Place), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1913 Apr 7, The suffragists' marched to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. By the second decade of the 20th century, woman suffrage--women's right to vote--had become an issue of national importance in America. The growth in the numbers of American working women and the valuable contributions women made in war production during World War I further increased the suffragists' support. On August 20, 1919, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote.
(HNPD, 4/7/99)
1914 Apr 7, British House of Commons passed the Irish Home Rule Bill.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1915 Apr 7, Billie Holliday, jazz and blues legend, was born. She sang "God Bless the Child."
(HN, 4/7/99)
1917 Apr 7, De Falla's ballet "El Sombrero de tres Picos," premiered in Madrid.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1920 Apr 7, Ravi Shankar, sitar player, was born in Benares, India.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1922 Apr 7, U.S. Secretary of Interior leased Naval Reserve #3, "Teapot Dome," in Wyoming to Harry F. Sinclair.
(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1923 Apr 7, The Workers Party of America in NYC became an official communist party.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1923 Apr 7, The 1st brain tumor operation under local anesthetic was performed at Beth Israel Hospital in NYC by Dr K. Winfield Ney.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1926 Apr 7, In San Luis Obispo, Ca., lightning sparked a 5-day oil fire killing 2 people. Over 6 million barrels of oil were burned. Final damages were estimated at $15 million.
(SFC, 4/7/09, p.D8)
1926 Apr 7, Mussolini's Irish wife broke his Italian nose.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1927 Apr 7, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was on hand for the first inter-city (DC to Manhattan) transmission by telephone of video imagery. Hoover’s image and voice were transmitted across telephone lines.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1927_in_television)(AH, 4/07, p.14)
1928 Apr 7, James Garner, actor (Rockford Files, Bret Maverick), was born in Norman, Okla.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1928 Apr 7, Alan J. Pakula, director (All the President's Men, Klute), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1931 Apr 7, Donald Barthelme (d.1989), US writer, was born in Philadelphia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barthelme)(WSJ, 2/21/09, p.W8)
1931 Apr 7, Daniel Ellsberg, anti-war activist and the man who released the Pentagon Papers, was born.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1932 Apr 7, Erv A. Kelley, US policeman, was shot to death by Pretty Boy Floyd.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1933 Apr 7, “Near beer" (3.2 beer) became legal after FDR signed an amendment to the Volstead Act, which had made drinking alcohol a federal crime. Prohibition ended when Utah became the 38th state to ratify 21st Amendment. [see Dec 5]
(SFC, 4/7/96, p.B-11)(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1933 Apr 7, The 1st two Nazi anti-Jewish laws barred Jews from legal and public service.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1933 Apr 7, Jan Erik/Eric Jan Hanussen, Berlin astrologer, illusionist, was murdered.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1934 Apr 7, In India, Mahatma Gandhi suspended his campaign of civil disobedience.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1938 Apr 7, [Edmund G] Jerry Brown Jr, (Gov-D-Cal, Mayor of Oakland), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1939 Apr 7, Francis Ford Coppola, director (Godfather, Apocalypse Now), was born in Detroit.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1939 Apr 7, Italy invaded Albania, which offered only token resistance. Less than a week later, Italy annexed Albania. [see Apr 8]
(AP, 4/7/99)
1942 Apr 7, There was a heavy German assault on Malta.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 7, The NFL adopted its free substitution rule.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 7, US Marine Lt. James Swett (1920-2009), division leader of Squadron 221, shot down 7 Japanese bombers over the Solomon Islands. He was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on this day.
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.B3)
1943 Apr 7, British and American armies link up between Wadi Akarit and El Guettar in North Africa, forming a solid line against the German army.
(HN, 4/7/99)
1943 Apr 7, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 7, Lt. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was seriously wounded during allied air raid.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1945 Apr 7, During World War II, American planes intercepted a Japanese fleet that was headed for Okinawa on a suicide mission. The Japanese battleship Yamato, the world's largest battleship, was sunk during the battle for Okinawa along with 4 Japanese destroyers.
(AP, 4/7/97)(HN, 4/7/99)(MC, 4/7/02)
1947 Apr 7, Auto pioneer Henry Ford (b.1863) died in Dearborn, Mich. Most of his personal estate, valued at $205 million, was left to the Ford Foundation. In 2001 Neil Baldwin authored "Henry Ford and the Jews - The Mass Production of Hate." In 2003 Douglas Brinkley authored "Wheels for the World - Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress." In 2005 Steven Watts authored “The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century."
(AP, 4/7/97)(HN, 2/20/98)(SFC, 6/13/03, p.B4)(SSFC, 8/28/05, p.C2)
1947 Apr 7, Arab students, influenced by national socialist movements in Europe, founded the Baath Party. Satia al-Husri, father of Ba’athism, was a disciple of German philosopher Johann Fichte. This became a holiday in Iraq until abolished in 2003.
(WSJ, 4/3/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/8/03, p.D4)(AP, 7/13/03)
1947 Apr 7, At Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, Friedrich A. von Hayek invited a group of classical liberals to discuss the threat of freedom posed by the expansionist governments of the day. The group founded the Mont Pelerin Society to continue meetings and discussions in the future. They viewed central planning as the single most important threat to liberty.
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A22)(www.montpelerin.org/montpelerin/mpsAbout.html)
1948 Apr 7, The World Health Organization (WHO) was founded by the UN. In 1948, the First World Health Assembly called for the creation of a "World Health Day" to mark the founding of the World Health Organization. Since 1950, World Health Day has been celebrated on the 7th of April annually.
(AP, 4/7/97)(www.who.int/world-health-day/previous/en/index.html)
1949 Apr 7, The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "South Pacific" opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theater for 1928 performances.
(AP, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1951 Apr 7, Janis Ian, [Janis Eddy Fink], lesbian, folk rocker, was born in NYC.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1953 Apr 7, The U.N. General Assembly elected Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961) as Secretary-General of the UN.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(AP, 4/7/97)
1954 Apr 7, Jackie Chan, martial art actor (Rumble in the Bronx), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1954 Apr 7, Pres. Eisenhower spoke at a press conference about why we needed to protect Vietnam and mentioned his fear of a "domino-effect" in Indochina.
(www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=2630)
1954 Apr 7, The West German government refused to recognize DDR (East Germany).
(MC, 4/7/02)
1955 Apr 7, Theda Bara (Theodosia Goodman), silent screen sex symbol, died. Her films included "A Fool There Was" and "Kathleen Mavoureen."
(HNPD, 7/24/98)(WUD, 1994 p.118)
1957 Apr 7, The last of New York City's electric trolleys completed its final run from the city's borough of Queens to Manhattan.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1958 Apr 7, Anti-nuclear peace protesters arrived at the Atomic Weapons Establishment near Aldermaston, England, after marching for several days from London.
(AP, 4/7/08)
1959 Apr 7, Oklahoma ended prohibition after 51 years.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1961 Apr 7, Tad Szulc (d.2001) wrote a front page NY Times article on anti-Castro forces training to fight at Florida bases and predicted a probable invasion on April 18. The invasion took place Apr 17.
(SFC, 5/24/01, p.C4)
1961 Apr 7, Marian Jordan (62), radio comedienne (Fibber McGee and Molly), died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1963 Apr 7, Yugoslavia proclaimed itself a Socialist republic.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1964 Apr 7, IBM introduced its innovative System/360, the company's first line of compatible mainframe computers that gave customers the option of upgrading from lower-cost models to more powerful, expensive ones.
(AP, 4/7/04)
1966 Apr 7, The United States recovered a hydrogen bomb it had lost off the coast of Spain.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1967 Apr 7, A, Israeli-Syrian minor border incident escalated into a full-scale aerial battle over the Golan Heights, resulting in the loss of six Syrian MiG-21s to Israeli Air Force (IAF) Dassault Mirage IIIs, and the latter's flight over Damascus.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War)
1969 Apr 7, The US Supreme Court in Stanley v. Georgia unanimously struck down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
(AP, 4/7/07)
1970 Apr 7, "Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-moon Marigolds," premiered in NYC. The play was written in 1964 by Paul Zindel, playwright and science teacher. Zindel received the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Effect_of_Gamma_Rays_on_Man-in-the-Moon_Marigolds)
1970 Apr 7, In the 42nd Academy Awards in Los Angeles "Midnight Cowboy" won for best picture, John Wayne for best actor (True Grit) and Maggie Smith for best actress (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42nd_Academy_Awards)
1971 Apr 7, President Nixon pledged a withdrawal of 100,000 more men from Vietnam by December.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1971 Apr 7, Pres. Nixon ordered Lt. Calley, imprisoned for the Mi Lai massacre, free.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1971 Apr 7, Miro Baresic (b.1950), a declared pro-Ustasha who strived for Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia, and his friend Andelko Brajkovic shot Ambassador Vladimir Rolovic inside the Yugoslav embassy in Stockholm. A group of Croatian far-right radicals hijacked a Scandinavian Airlines passenger plane in 1972, forcing his release. He found refuge in Paraguay, but was eventually captured again and extradited to Sweden in 1980, where his life sentence was converted to 18 years. He returned to Croatia in 1991 where he was killed in fighting against Serb-led forces fighting against Croatia's independence.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miro_Bare%C5%A1i%C4%87)(AP, 8/1/16)
1972 Apr 7, Richard McCoy (1942-1974), Vietnam veteran and pilot, hijacked a United Air Lines jet and extorted $500,000 in copycat version of the DB Cooper crime. He parachuted into a Utah desert, but was caught with the money in his house and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He escaped and died in a shootout with FBI agent Nicholas O’Hara in Nov, 1974.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, Z1 p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_McCoy,_Jr.)
1972 Apr 7, "Crazy" Joe Gallo, flamboyant mobster, was gunned down at his 43rd birthday party in Manhattan’s Umberto's Clam House.
(SFC, 12/30/04, p.A2)
1972 Apr 7, Sheik Abeid Amane Karume, Zanzibari vice-president of the republic of Tanzania, was assassinated.
(Econ, 12/13/03, p.43)(www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3404703463.html)
1976 Apr 7, Robert A. Swanson (d.1999 at 52), a venture capitalist, and Herb Boyer, a UCSF molecular biologist and co-discoverer of gene-splicing in 1973, incorporated Genentech Inc. They planned to use gene splicing to create a genre of medicines.
(SFC, 5/28/96, p.B1)(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A10)(SSFC, 4/1/01, p.B1)
1976 Apr 7, China's leadership deposed Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping and appointed Hua Kuo-feng (Guofeng) prime minister and first deputy chairman of the Communist Party.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1977 Apr 7, Pres. Carter stopped the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel rods in order to discourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A18)
1977 Apr 7, The RAF gunned down Siegfried Bubeck, a West German federal prosecutor, his driver, Wolfgang Goebel, and the guard Georg Wurster. In 2009 police, using new DNA evidence, arrested Verena Becker (57), a former German leftist terrorist on suspicion of involvement in the slayings. Becker had been arrested a month after the ambush, following a shootout with police. Prosecutors at the time did not have enough evidence to try her on charges of involvement in the Buback slaying, but convicted her of armed robbery and attempted murder stemming from the shootout. She was sentenced to life in prison. In 1989 she was pardoned of those charges by German Pres. Richard von Weizsaecker and released from prison. In 2010 Becker was charged with 3 counts of murder for her alleged role in the fatal 1977 ambush.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A8)(AP, 8/28/09)(AP, 4/21/10)
1978 Apr 7, President Carter announced he was deferring development of the neutron bomb, a high-radiation weapon.
(AP, 4/7/08)
1978 Apr 7, A Gutenberg bible sold for a record $2.2 million in NYC. It was bought by Martin Breslauer for the state museum of Baden Wurttemberg.
(www.biblio.com/details.php?dcx=35363264&aid=frg)
1980 Apr 7, The US broke relations with Iran during the hostage crises. Pres. Carter ordered all Iranian diplomats expelled from the US and prohibited any further exports to the nation. Pres. Carter signed Executive Order 12205 for economic sanctions against Iran.
(HN, 4/7/97)(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=33235)
1982 Apr 7, In the SF Bay Area an AC Transit bus clipped a stalled car and then struck a double-tanker truck that jack-knifed and erupted in the Caldecott Tunnel. The resulting fireball left 7 people dead.
(SFC, 11/2/13, p.D1)
1982 Apr 7, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh (b.1936), Iran’s minister of foreign affairs, was arrested. He was convicted of plotting against the government and executed on Sep 15.
(www.cedmagic.com/home/ced-digest/ced-digest-vol-07/ced-digest0714.html)
1983 Apr 7, Specialist Story Musgrave and Don Peterson took the first US space walk in almost a decade as they worked in the open cargo bay of Challenger for nearly four hours.
(HN, 4/7/97)(AP, 4/7/03)
1984 Apr 7, Frank Church (b.1924), Sen-D-Idaho, (1957-81), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church)
1986 Apr 7, The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) became US law. It was created by California Congressman Pete Stark (1931-2020) and allowed workers to continue receiving health coverage for a period of time after they left a job. The statute had passed Congress in 1985.
(http://tinyurl.com/nu9f2ly)(SFC, 1/25/20, p.C1)
1986 Apr 7, Dimitris Angelopoulos (79), a Greek industrialist, was killed by Nov. 17 militants. In 2003 Patroklos Tselentis testified that he drove the getaway motorcycle.
(AP, 3/26/03)(http://tinyurl.com/yzu4sj)
1987 Apr 7, Chicago Mayor Harold Washington handily won a second term, quashing a challenge by archrival Edward Vrdolyak.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1987 Apr 7, Frances Newton (22) allegedly killed her husband and 2 children in Houston to gain insurance benefits. According to a reprieve petition, Adrian Newton was a drug user and drug seller and there was evidence that some sort of trouble in this regard was brewing before the murder. In 2005 she was executed in Huntsville, Texas, the 1st black woman to be executed by the state since the Civil War.
(SFC, 9/15/05, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/9mw34)
1987 Apr 7, Ali Mecili, a lawyer active in Algeria's human rights movement, was killed by three gunshots in the foyer of his Paris apartment. Colleagues accused the Algerian government of involvement. In 2008 Algerian diplomat Mohamed Ziane Hasseni was arrested at an airport in the French port city of Marseille, based on an international arrest warrant. A Paris judge had signed the orders for the arrest of Hassani and the suspected killer, Abdelmalek Amellouet, in December last year.
(AP, 10/17/08)(http://tinyurl.com/67pryj)
1988 Apr 7, Albie Sachs (b.1935) was working in Mozambique on legal guarantees that would be part of the new South African Constitution when a car bomb exploded that left him without a right arm.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, Z1 p.7)(www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8732.html)
1988 Apr 7, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Afghan leader Najibullah met in the Soviet Central Asian city of Tashkent. They later issued a joint statement announcing an end to the civil war in Afghanistan and withdrawal Soviet troops.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1989 Apr 7, A week after the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster, President Bush pledged federal assistance to help in the clean-up.
(AP, 4/7/99)
1989 Apr 7, A Soviet nuclear-powered submarine, the Komsomolets, caught fire and sank in the Norwegian Sea, claiming 42 of 69 lives.
(AP, 4/7/99)(SFC, 8/14/00, p.A13)
1990 Apr 7, A display of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs opened at Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center, the same day the center and its director were indicted on obscenity charges. Both were later acquitted.
(AP, 4/7/00)
1990 Apr 7, Former national security adviser John M. Poindexter was convicted of five counts at his Iran-Contra trial. However, a federal appeals court later reversed the convictions.
(HN, 4/7/97)(AP, 4/7/00)
1990 Apr 7, In Burma (later Myanmar) a double-decker ferry sank in Gyaing River during a storm and 215 people were believed drowned.
(www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0005329.html)
1990 Apr 7, An arson fire aboard a ferry enroute from Norway to Denmark killed 159 people.
(AP, 4/7/00)(AP, 1/14/12)
1991 Apr 7, US military planes began airdropping supplies to Kurdish refugees who were facing starvation and exposure in the snow-covered mountains of northern Iraq. The United States warned Iraq not to interfere with the relief effort.
(AP, 4/7/01)
1991 Apr 7, In Puerto Rico 3 prisoners escaped from the Rio Piedras State Penitentiary in a hijacked helicopter with the help of accomplices. Two were recaptured, while a third remained at large.
(AP, 12/31/02)
1992 Apr 7, Democrat Bill Clinton swept the New York, Kansas and Wisconsin primaries.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1992 Apr 7, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat survived the crash landing of his plane in the Libyan desert; three crew members were killed.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1992 Apr 7, The Sacramento Bee, The New York Times and Newsday won two Pulitzer prizes each; playwright Robert Schenkkan was honored for "The Kentucky Cycle," novelist Jane Smiley for "A Thousand Acres."
(AP, 4/7/97)
1993 Apr 7, European warplanes began arriving in Italy, prepared to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1994 Apr 7, Angelus Gottfried "Golo" Mann (85), German-US historian, died.
(www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/MannGolo/)
1994 Apr 7, Civil war erupted in Rwanda, a day after a mysterious plane crash claimed the lives of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. Former Defense Minister Colonel Theoneste Bagosora reportedly instigated the killing spree by Hutu militia. Within twenty-four hours fighting resulted in the deaths of Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the prime minister of Rwanda, Joseph Kavaruganda, the president of the Supreme Court and hundreds of others. In the months that followed, hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and Hutu intellectuals were slaughtered. In Kibeho thousands of Tutsis gathered in a church where they were bombed, shot or hacked to death by Hutu soldiers and militiamen.
(AP, 4/7/99)(SFC, 4/8/99, p.C3)(SSFC, 4/7/02, p.A19)(MC, 4/7/02)
1994 Apr 7, UN officer Colonel Luc Marchal ordered troops to escort Rwandan prime minister Agathe Uwilingyimana to a radio station in Kigali. The party was ambushed, the troops hacked to death, and the prime minister was raped and murdered. Augustin Ndindiliyimana, head of the Gendarmerie Nationale, was later charged in the killing of 10 Belgian peacekeepers charged with guarding Uwilingyimana and for his role in the Tutsi extermination. Ndindiliyimana was arrested in Belgium in 2000.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A16)
1994 Apr 7, In Rwanda Augustin Bizimungu made a speech, several days before he was made army chief, in the northern district of Mukingo, calling for the killing of Tutsis. Bizimungu was arrested in Angola in 2002. In 2011 he received a 30-year jail term for his role in the mass killing of Tutsis.
(AP, 5/17/11)
1994 Apr 7, Pope John Paul II made remarks at the conclusion of a concert in commemoration of the Shoah (holocaust), in which he acknowledged the Nazi Holocaust killing of Jews.
(http://tinyurl.com/c9vt8)
1995 Apr 7, President Clinton threatened to veto a lengthy list of bills passed by the Republican-controlled House if they were not modified in the Senate.
(AP, 4/7/00)
1995 Apr 7, In a prime-time television address, House Speaker Newt Gingrich declared the GOP "Contract with America" was only a beginning.
(AP, 4/7/00)
1996 Apr 7, Monica Lewinsky informed pres. Clinton that she was to be transferred from the White House. He promised to bring her back following the elections and they had another sexual encounter.
(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A13)
1996 Apr 7, Celebrating Easter Mass under a glorious spring sky, Pope John Paul II appealed for support for the "artisans" of peace in Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the Holy Land.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1997 Apr 7, The Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to Steven Millhauser for "Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer," but no award was given for drama. The Times-Picayune of New Orleans won two journalism Pulitzers, including the public service prize, for a series examining how overfishing and pollution are devastating the oceans.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1997 Apr 7, In Columbia prisoners took over a 1,200 inmate facility in Bucaramanga, the 3rd prison to be seized in a week.
(WSJ, 4/8/97, p.A1)
1997 Apr 7, In Zaire deserting government soldiers of the 21st Brigade donned white scarves and declared themselves on the side of the rebels as the rebels approached Lubumbashi, the capital of the copper and cobalt rich Shaba province.
(SFC, 4/8/97, p.A8)
1998 Apr 7, President Clinton held a town meeting in Kansas City, Mo., on the future of Social Security.
(AP, 4/7/99)
1998 Apr 7, Mary Bono, the widow of entertainer-turned-politician Sonny Bono, won a special election to serve out the remainder of her husband's congressional term.
(AP, 4/7/99)
1998 Apr 7, Indonesia and the IMF agreed on a new plan for the economy. Pres. Suharto and the fund made concessions, that included continuing subsidies on food and fuel and closing more insolvent banks.
(SFC, 4/8/98, p.A12)
1999 Apr 7, In Kentucky 2 volunteer firefighters, Kenneth Nickell (28) and Kevin Smith (30), were killed while battling a blaze at the Daniel Boone National Forest.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A13)
1999 Apr 7, The US State Dept. made public a list of Serb commanders whose names were to be sent to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A10)
1999 Apr 7, Chechen gunmen killed 4 Russian policemen patrolling the border near Stavropol.
(WSJ, 4/8/99, p.A1)
1999 Apr 7, Spyros Kyprianou, the acting president of Cyprus, planned to fly to Belgrade to negotiate the release of the 3 American soldiers held by Serbia.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A1)
1999 Apr 7, In Macedonia the government evacuated a huge refugee encampment overnight and sent them to locations in Albania, Greece and Turkey.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A1)
1999 Apr 7, Heavy NATO bombing reportedly killed 10 civilians in Pristina, Kosovo. The Provincial Executive Council Building, which housed the offices of Zoran Andjelkovic, Kosovo's top Serbian official, were was hit by bombs.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.AQ10)
1999 Apr 7, Yugoslav forces sealed the Morini border with Albania and the border at Macedonia and told refugees to return home. The wave of refugees approached the half-million mark.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A1)(SFC, 4/20/99, p.A7)(AP, 4/7/00)
2000 Apr 7, Pres. Clinton signed a bill to allow people aged 65-70 to earn as much as they can without losing Social Security benefits.
(SFC, 4/8/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 7, Attorney General Janet Reno met in Washington with the father of Elian Gonzalez; Reno later told reporters that officials would arrange for Juan Miguel Gonzalez to reclaim his son, but she gave Elian’s Miami relatives one more chance to drop their resistance and join in a peaceful transfer.
(AP, 4/7/01)
2000 Apr 7, A Miami jury ruled that cigarettes caused the diseases of 3 smokers chosen as representatives in a class-action suit. Compensatory damages totaled 12.7 million and opened the door to huge punitive damages.
(SFC, 4/8/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 7, Iqbal Masih, a slain child labor spokesperson, was named in Sweden as the first winner of the World’s Children’s prize. Masih was gunned down at age 13 after speaking out against child labor in carpet factories where he had worked from age 5-10. Prize money was earmarked to establish the Iqbal Masih Freedom Center for the Rights of the Child in Pakistan.
(SFC, 4/8/00, p.C1)
2001 Apr 7, In Cincinnati Timothy Thomas (19), an unarmed black man wanted on 14 misdemeanor warrants, was fatally shot by a white police officer. The shooting led to city-wide riots. Officer Stephen Roach was later charged with negligent homicide and obstructing official business.
(SFC, 4/11/01, p.A10)(SFC, 5/8/01, p.A3)(AP, 4/7/02)
2001 Apr 7, The $297 million Mars Odyssey was launched on a six-month, 286-million-mile journey to the Red Planet and was expected to arrive near Mars Oct 24. A 2-year orbit to map the planet’s chemistry and minerals was planned.
(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A2)(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.A13)(AP, 4/7/02)
2001 Apr 7, Actress Beatrice Straight died in Los Angeles at age 86.
(AP, 4/7/02)
2001 Apr 7, China rejected US statements of regret and continued to demand an apology for the April 1 collision between a US spy plane and Chinese jet.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.C1)
2001 Apr 7, In Tehran 40-42 people were arrested including members of the opposition Freedom Movement. The Revolutionary Court said some were linked to the Iraq-based Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK).
(SFC, 4/9/01, p.A8)
2001 Apr 7, The weeklong Jewish Passover began at sundown.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.C3)
2001 Apr 7, In the Philippines Manila went dark for 14 hours when a transmission line overloaded and cut power to 35 million people.
(WSJ, 4/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Apr 7, In Vietnam a Russian-made M-17 helicopter carrying a team searching for American MIAs crashed and all aboard were reported killed. Rescuers recovered the bodies of 9 Vietnamese and 7 Americans the next day.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.C2)(SFC, 4/9/01, p.A7)
2002 Apr 7, Pres. Bush ended weekend talks with Britain’s PM Tony Blair in Texas. Blair said he would back a US military action against Iraq.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A9)
2002 Apr 7, Arthur Andersen announced it would lay off more than a quarter of its US workforce, a direct result of Enron filing for bankruptcy in the fall of 2001.
(AP, 4/8/03)
2002 Apr 7, Actor John Agar (81) died in Burbank, California.
(AP, 4/7/03)
2002 Apr 7, In Colombia 2 bombs killed 12 people in Villavicencio and FARC rebels were suspected. One bomb was used to attract people when the 2nd was detonated.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A9)
2002 Apr 7, In Costa Rica Abel Pacheco (68), psychiatrist, poet and former TV commentator, was elected president in a runoff against Rolando Araya.
(WSJ, 4/8/02, p.A1)
2002 Apr 7, In Iraq Saddam Hussein pledged to defeat the US if attacked and promised to continue supplying Palestinians to defend against Israel.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A9)
2002 Apr 7, Israeli forces continued Operation Defensive Shield and news reporters were kept away. 12 Palestinians were killed in Nablus with stiff resistance in the Jenin refugee camp. Worldwide protests included a march in Morocco by a half million people and in Brussels by some 10,000.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A1,8)(AP, 4/7/03)
2003 Apr 7, Syracuse beat Kansas 81-78 in the NCAA Basketball finals.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Apr 7, The US Supreme Court voted 6-3 to uphold a 50-year-old Virginia law making it a crime to burn a cross as an act of intimidation.
(AP, 4/7/04)
2003 Apr 7, Pulitzer Prize winners included the Boston Globe for public service, Jeffrey Eugenides for fiction (Middlesex); Rick Atkinson for history ((An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa (1942-1943); and Samantha Power for general nonfiction (A Problem from Hell: American and the Age of Genocide"). The Boston Globe won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for public service for its coverage of the priest sex abuse scandal.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A2)(AP, 4/7/08)
2003 Apr 7, Jewelry valued at $4.5 million was stolen from the Lang Estate and Jewelry store on Union Square in SF. 2 men were later arrested. In 2006 Troy Smith (44) was convicted in the robbery and faced 35 years to life in prison. His brother Dino Smith (48) and George Turner (46) were convicted in 2005. The robbers entered on a Sunday night and forced employees to open the safes the next morning and escaped with 1,300 pieces of jewelry.
(SFC, 12/21/04, p.B3)(SFC, 11/1/06, p.B7)(SFC, 10/1/09, p.E3)
2003 Apr 7, In the 19th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom US forces in tanks and armored vehicles stormed into the center of Baghdad, seizing Saddam Hussein's Sijood and Republican palaces. As many as 5 marines were killed. Many Iraqis died in constant suicidal attacks. It was later speculated that the US and the Baath regime arranged a secret deal (safqua) to hand over Baghdad.
(AP, 4/7/03)(SFC, 4/7/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/8/03, p.A1)(SSFC, 4/20/03, p.D3)
2003 Apr 7, A US warplane dropped 4 precision-guided 2,000-pound JDAMs and left a smoking crater 60 feet deep in the upscale al-Mansour section of western Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein was believed to have been in a meeting with top officials.
(AP, 4/8/03)(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Apr 7, Capt. Harry Alexander Hornbuckle on the road to Baghdad led 80 US soldiers against 300 Iraqi and Syrian fighters. 200 enemy were killed with no US casualties.
(WSJ, 11/11/03, p.A1)
2003 Apr 7, The SF Chronicle ran a $45,000 full-page ad that called for the impeachment of Pres. Bush. Former US Attorney Gen’l. Ramsey Clark led the ad sponsors.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A12)
2003 Apr 7, Juan Emeterio Rivas, Colombia radio journalist for station Calor Estereo, was shot and killed by gunmen after he told his police body guards to take time off. Rivas' body and that of an engineering student were discovered in a rural area outside Barrancabermeja. Julio Cesar Ardila, the mayor of Barrancabermeja, was later charged with ordering the murder. He was among three men convicted in the murder of Jose Emeterio Rivas. In 2009 Ardila was sentenced to 28 years in prison for ordering the murder.
(AP, 4/7/03)(AP, 7/12/03)(AP, 1/22/09)
2003 Apr 7, Cuba handed down sentences of 15-27 years to the 1st 7 of 80 recently rounded dissidents. Activists of Oswaldo Paya’s Christian Liberation Movement made up more than two-thirds of those arrested. In response the EU imposed diplomatic sanctions and Cuban officials boycotted embassy functions in what came to be called the “cocktail war." The sanctions were suspended in 2005 and lifted in 2008.
(AP, 4/8/03)(Econ, 12/17/05, p.38)(Econ, 6/28/08, p.44)
2003 Apr 7, Cecile de Brunhoff (99), the inspiration for Babar the elephant whose adventures captivated generations of children, died in Paris. She first invented the tale of a little elephant as a bedtime story for her boys in 1931. They in turn told their father, painter Jean de Brunhoff, who illustrated the story and filled in details.
(AP, 4/8/03)
2003 Apr 7, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man who approached the fence of a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip overnight. In Tulkarem, Israeli troops arrested Maslama Thabet, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.
(AP, 4/7/03)
2003 Apr 7, Mexico said it would prepay $3.84 billion in the last outstanding Brady par bonds. They originally totaled $34 billion.
(WSJ, 4/9/03, p.A10)
2003 Apr 7, In the northern Siberian republic of Yakutia a fire engulfed an old wooden school, killing 21 students and a teacher.
(AP, 4/7/03)
2004 Apr 7, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) issued its latest "Pig Book," an exposition of "improper of unnecessary" US federal expenditures.
(SSFC, 4/4/04, Par p.24)
2004 Apr 7, The US government issued the 1st license for a manned suborbital rocket to Scaled Composites of Mojave headed by Burt Rutan.
(SFC, 4/8/04, p.A2)
2004 Apr 7, In Brazil Amazon Indians attacked prospectors who were illegally digging for diamonds. Cinta Larga Indians massacred 29 illegal wildcat diamond miners on their remote northern reservation. 28 Indians were charged in the killings, but the case has stalled over jurisdictional questions.
(AP, 4/14/04)(AP, 12/10/07)
2004 Apr 7, In Germany a court in Hamburg released Mounir el-Motassadeq (30), the only man convicted so far of involvement in the Sep 11, 2001, attacks.
(WSJ, 4/8/04, p.A1)
2004 Apr 7, A U.S.-led multinational force trying to bring stability to Haiti helped detain Wilford Ferdinand, a top rebel figure.
(AP, 4/9/04)
2004 Apr 7, In India a land mine killed at least 26 policemen in the eastern state of Jharkhand. Communist guerrillas, calling for a boycott of India's national elections, were suspected.
(AP, 4/8/04)
2004 Apr 7, U.S. Marines in a fierce battle for this Sunni Muslim stronghold fired rockets that hit a mosque compound filled with worshippers, and witnesses said as many as 40 people were killed. Shiite-inspired violence spread to nearly all of the country.
(AP, 4/7/04)
2004 Apr 7, Militiamen loyal to al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, clashed with Polish troops in Karbala, and Muntadhir al-Mussawi, an aide to the cleric, was killed.
(AP, 4/7/04)
2004 Apr 7, In Iraq 2 German counter-terrorism GSG-9 security agents were ambushed and went missing while on a routine trip from Jordan to Baghdad.
(AP, 4/10/04)
2004 Apr 7, In Malaysia 3 men armed with firebombs, machetes and an ax attacked Myanmar's embassy, hacking one senior official and starting a fire that destroyed the building.
(AP, 4/7/04)
2004 Apr 7, A Moscow court sentenced Russian arms control researcher Igor Sutyagin, a military analyst with the USA and Canada Institute, a respected Moscow-based think-tank, to 15 years on charges of passing information on nuclear submarines and other weapons to a British company that Russia claimed was a CIA cover. Sutyagin insisted on his innocence, saying the information he provided was available from open sources. In 2010 he was released as part of a spy swap with the US.
(AP, 4/7/04)(AP, 7/9/10)
2005 Apr 7, Pres. Bush met with Premier Berlusconi and Pres. Ciampi one day after viewing the pope’s body at the Vatican.
(SFC, 4/7/05, p.A13)
2005 Apr 7, In Delaware police arrested Allison L. Norman (22) after he killed 2 people and wounded 4 others during a rampage.
(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A3)
2005 Apr 7, Montana voted to ban smoking in all public places. Gov. Brian Schweitzer said he would sign the legislation.
(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A3)
2005 Apr 7, Pfizer Inc. agreed to suspend sales and marketing of its arthritis drug Bextra at the request of US and EU drug regulators, who said the risks outweigh the drug's benefits.
(AP, 4/7/05)(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A1)
2005 Apr 7, California state prosecutors charged Julie Lee, a top volunteer fund-raiser for former Sec. of State Kevin Shelley, with grand theft and other felonies. In 2008 Lee (62) was found guilty on 5 of 7 charges relating to Shelley’s 2002 campaign, All the charges related to a $500,000 grant for a SF Sunset District community center that was never built. In state court Lee pleaded guilty to 9 counts.
(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A1)(SFC, 7/12/08, p.A1)(SFC, 7/17/08, p.B1)
2005 Apr 7, Riza Malaj (34), Albania's most wanted man, blew himself up about this time while fishing with dynamite. He lost both hands, badly hurt his eyes and suffered serious wounds all over his body while trying to catch trout.
(AP, 4/11/05)
2005 Apr 7, Australia’s PM John Howard and Malaysia’s Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced plans to negotiate a free trade agreement but refused to concede ground on key differences regarding Canberra's role in the region.
(AP, 4/7/05)
2005 Apr 7, A bomb blast rocked a Cairo bazaar popular with foreigners. An American tourist died the next day from wounds sustained in a bomb blast raising the death toll to three. Hassan Rafaat Ahmed Bashandi (17-18), was carrying almost 7 pounds of TNT in a leather bag filled with nails when it exploded prematurely.
(AP, 4/8/05)(AP, 4/11/05)
2005 Apr 7, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, was named Iraq's interim prime minister; Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was sworn in as interim president.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2005 Apr 7, The Irish Republican Army said it will consider an appeal by Sinn Fein party chief Gerry Adams to renounce violence, a long-elusive goal in Northern Ireland peacemaking.
(AP, 4/7/05)
2005 Apr 7, Mexico City's leftist mayor formally declared his intention to run for president next year even as Congress was to decide whether he should face criminal charges for allegedly disobeying a court order in a land-use case.
(AP, 4/8/05)
2005 Apr 7, Passengers on historic bus trips between the Pakistani and Indian portions of Kashmir crossed a bridge spanning the de facto border, voyages both sides hope will lead to lasting peace on the subcontinent. Kashmiris walked across the “Peace Bridge," on the Line of Control between India and Pakistan.
(AP, 4/7/05)(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A3)
2005 Apr 7, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe defied a European Union travel ban and arrived in Rome to join world leaders attending Pope John Paul II's funeral. Italy has a pact with the Vatican in which it does not interfere with people transiting the country to see the pope.
(AP, 4/7/05)
2006 Apr 7, The US Court of International Law ruled that US Customs violated a provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in applying a law known as the Byrd amendment to antidumping and countervailing duties on goods from Canada and Mexico.
(Reuters, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, Republican leaders called on Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., to step down from his ranking post on the House ethics committee because of allegations that he provided legislative earmarks benefiting companies and individuals who helped make him a millionaire.
(SFC, 4/8/06, p.A4)
2006 Apr 7, Dena Schlosser, charged with murder for cutting off her baby daughter Margaret's arms in what her lawyers portrayed as a religious frenzy, was found not guilty by reason of insanity by a judge in McKinney, Texas.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2006 Apr 7, In Tennessee 10 people were killed as tornadoes hit the area for the 2nd time in a week.
(AP, 4/8/06)
2006 Apr 7, It was reported that scientists at MIT had harnessed a replicating virus, that binds to gold and cobalt oxide, to create a nanotechnology battery.
(WSJ, 4/7/06, p.B2)
2006 Apr 7, In southern Algeria gunmen attacked a convoy of customs agents traveling through the desert, killing 13 and wounding eight others.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, Australian PM John Howard moved to ease Indonesian outrage over a decision to grant visas to asylum-seekers from Papua, saying his government would review the process.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, In Austria a 2-day meeting began in Vienna for European Imams aimed at creating a distinct identity for European Muslims.
(SFC, 4/7/06, p.A16)
2006 Apr 7, A British judge ruled that author Dan Brown did not steal ideas for "The Da Vinci Code" from a nonfiction work.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2006 Apr 7, Britain’s BAE Systems announced plans to sell its stake in aircraft maker Airbus to its French-German partner EADS.
(AFP, 4/8/06)
2006 Apr 7, In Chile an appeals court upheld the indictment of former dictator Gen. Pinochet on charges of evading up to $3 million in taxes related to secret accounts in foreign banks.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, The EU said it has cut off direct aid payments to the Hamas-led Palestinian government because of its refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, A bus skidded off a narrow mountain road and plunged into a river in a remote region of Indian Kashmir and dozens were feared dead.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, A toned-down edition of Playboy magazine went on sale in Indonesia, defying threats of protests by Islamic hardliners in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, At least 2 suicide attackers, one wearing a woman's cloaks, blew themselves up at the Buratha Shiite mosque in northern Baghdad, killing some 79-90 people and wounding scores. One US service member died of wounds suffered while on patrol in western Baghdad.
(AP, 4/7/06)(AP, 4/8/06)(Econ, 4/22/06, p.48)
2006 Apr 7, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian man during an overnight arrest raid in the West Bank city of Nablus.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, Israeli missiles slammed into a car in Gaza City, killing two members of a Palestinian rocket squad in the 2nd deadly airstrike since the Islamic militant group Hamas assumed power last week. An Israeli airstrike killed six Palestinian militants and wounded five at a militant training camp in central Gaza.
(AP, 4/8/06)(SFC, 4/8/06, p.A7)
2006 Apr 7, Japan’s health and welfare ministry said the nation’s population shrank in the year through November 2005, the first annual decrease on record, confirming an earlier government prediction.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, In Nepal police fired tear gas and fought frenzied street battles with protesters on the second day of a strike called by government adversaries of King Gyanendra. Protesters said 150 people were arrested.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, It was reported that some AIDS patients in South Africa were choosing cash disability grants over advanced AIDS drugs in order to sustain their families.
(WSJ, 4/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Apr 7, In Turkey a suicide bomber blew herself up injuring 2 people, including a suspected accomplice. Turkish forces killed 6 Kurdish rebels in Sirnak.
(WSJ, 4/8/06, p.A1)(AP, 4/8/06)
2006 Apr 7, The UN appealed for $426 million to help victims of drought in Horn of Africa, where more than 40 percent of people are undernourished and thousands have died because of complications due to hunger.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, Venezuela Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez said that five suspects were being charged with willful homicide in the slayings of the 3 Faddoul brothers, whose bodies were found April 4. Supporters of President Hugo Chavez pelted the car of the US ambassador with eggs and tomatoes, then chased after his convoy on motorcycles.
(AP, 4/7/06)(AP, 4/8/06)
2007 Apr 7, The New York Times reported in its Sunday edition that the Bush administration in January allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from North Korea in an apparent violation of a UN Security Council sanctions resolution passed months earlier over its nuclear test.
(Reuters, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Thousands of people marched through downtown Los Angeles, demanding a way for the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to become citizens and condemning President Bush's latest proposal.
(AP, 4/8/07)
2007 Apr 7, It was reported that Ray Irani, Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s chairman and chief executive, took in more than $400 million in compensation in 2006, one of the biggest single-year payouts in US corporate history.
(Reuters, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, The sport salmon fishing season opened in California.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A1)
2007 Apr 7, In Oregon 15 libraries in Jackson were due to close following the loss of $7 million in federal funding.
(SSFC, 3/4/07, p.A1)
2007 Apr 7, It was reported that injections of Mycobacterium vaccae into mice caused their immune systems to produce serotonin. This neurotransmitter, when low in humans, was known to be related to depression.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.79)
2007 Apr 7, Johnny Hart (76), creator of the B.C. comic strip (1958), died at his home in Endicott, NY. He and Brant Parker created the “Wizard of Id" strip.
(SFC, 4/9/07, p.B3)
2007 Apr 7, Actor Barry Nelson (b.1917) died in Bucks County, Pa. He was the first actor to portray Ian Fleming's secret agent James Bond in a 1954 TV adoption of Casino Royale.
(SFC, 4/16/07, p.B8)(AP, 4/7/08)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Nelson)
2007 Apr 7, In southwestern Afghanistan suspected Taliban militants ambushed Afghan workers of an American de-mining company, leaving seven people dead and four wounded. Officials said more than 1,000 NATO and Afghan troops clashed with Taliban and took over control of Sangin, a district center in southern Afghanistan long held by the militants.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Suspected Islamist militants opened fire on a military patrol in northwestern Algeria, starting a gunbattle that left nine soldiers and six attackers dead.
(AP, 4/8/07)
2007 Apr 7, In Brazil Martin Strel, a 52-year-old Slovenian, completed a 3,272 swim down the Amazon River that could set a world record for distance. In 2000, he completed a 1,866-mile swim along the Danube. He broke that record two years later after swimming 2,360 miles down the Mississippi. In 2004 he broke it again by swimming 2,487 miles along the Yangtze river in China.
(AP, 4/8/07)
2007 Apr 7, In India a jeep carrying a gelatin-based explosive used for a highway construction project exploded in a southern village, killing 16 people and injuring 22 more.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, US warplanes attacked suspected militiamen wielding shoulder-fired rockets in the second day of fierce fighting against Shiite gunmen south of Baghdad. At least one civilian was killed and five were seriously wounded when an American tank fired on their house in Diwaniyah. Iraqi troops killed Abu Baraa al-Libi, a Libyan al-Qaida figure, in a raid on his Baghdad hideout just before the man could detonate an explosives belt he was wearing. US forces also killed one suspect and captured 8 others in raids in Baghdad and south of Ramadi. A roadside bomb exploded next to a joint American-Iraqi army patrol on a highway leading into Annah, 175 miles northwest of Baghdad. Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and two were wounded. Police in Fallujah reported finding four bodies in the center of the city. Four American soldiers were killed in an explosion near their vehicle in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad. Duaa Khalil Aswad (17), a member of the insular Yazidi religious sect, was stoned to death for loving a Sunni Muslim boy [see April 22].
(AP, 4/7/07)(AP, 4/8/07)(SFC, 5/22/07, p.A8)
2007 Apr 7, An Israeli helicopter launched an airstrike along the Gaza Strip's border with Israel, killing a Palestinian militant and wounding two others.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, The 17-year insurgency in Kashmir continued with an average of 3 lives lost every day. India had an estimated 600,000 soldiers and paramilitary police stationed in Jammu & Kashmir state.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.14)
2007 Apr 7, Emergency officials said 247 dead seals have washed up on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan in the past week.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Libya’s foreign-exchange reserves were estimated at $56 billion. The population was reported to be about 5.6 million.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.46)
2007 Apr 7, Malaysian ministers issued fresh attacks on bloggers, threatening to take away their rights and accusing them of trying to overthrow the government, according to reports.
(AFP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, In northern Pakistan some 40 people were killed and more than 70 injured in 2 days of sectarian clashes between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Kurram.
(AFP, 4/7/07)(Econ, 4/14/07, p.43)
2007 Apr 7, In the southern Philippines 9 soldiers and a civilian were killed in a clash in a small army camp in Jolo island’s Parang town.
(AP, 4/8/07)
2007 Apr 7, A Russian rocket carrying the American billionaire who helped develop Microsoft Word roared into the night skies over Kazakhstan, sending Charles Simonyi and two cosmonauts soaring into orbit on a two-day journey to the international space station.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, A roadside bomb tore through a civilian bus in northern Sri Lanka, killing seven people and wounding 26. The army blamed Tamil Tiger rebels for the attack.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Thousands of supporters of Ukrainian PM Viktor Yanukovych rallied for a fifth day in the streets of Kiev, calling for stability amid a political crisis over the president's dissolution of parliament.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Yemeni police arrested three men suspected of setting fire to a mosque and wounding at least 33 people.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2008 Apr 7, The Washington Post won 6 Pulitzer Prizes, the most in its history. Junot Diaz won the fiction award for “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." Tracy Letts won the drama award for “August: Osage County." Bob Dylan won a special citation for his life’s work.
(SFC, 4/8/08, p.A8)
2008 Apr 7, In North Carolina Thomas Wright, a former state lawmaker, was convicted of mishandling charitable contributions and fraudulently obtaining a loan. He was sentenced to 6-8 years in prison.
(WSJ, 4/8/08, p.A2)
2008 Apr 7, In Ohio 9 mortgage lenders agreed to modify adjustable-rate mortgages for borrowers facing foreclosure. In Pennsylvania mortgage companies and consumer advocates opened talks to help cash-strapped homeowners avoid foreclosure. Last week Maryland’s Gov. signed a measure creating a 150-day moratorium on foreclosures.
(WSJ, 4/8/08, p.A4)
2008 Apr 7, Samuel (b.1913) Frankel, Detroit area developer and philanthropist, died. In the 1960s Frankel collaborated with Harry Cunningham to create the discount-store concept, building the first Kmart store. In 1969, he developed Somerset Mall. In 2005 he and his wife Jean provided a $20 million endowment to establish the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.
(www.lsa.umich.edu/judaic/html/history_goals_3_2.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/5srvs6)
2008 Apr 7, In southern Afghanistan, militants attacked a police convoy in Uruzgan province, and the ensuing clash left 13 insurgents dead and five wounded. In the western province of Herat, Taliban militants attacked a checkpoint in Shindand district, killing two police officers and wounding another.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 7, In Australia 5 teenage boys armed with machetes and baseball bats invaded a Sydney high school, smashing classrooms and injuring 18 students and a teacher.
(AFP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, In London a coroner's jury decided that Diana and Dodi Fayed were unlawfully killed due to reckless speed and drinking by their driver, and by the reckless pursuit of vehicles chasing them, not as part of a murder conspiracy.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 7, In London Oleg Gordievsky, a double agent who became the most senior Soviet spy to defect to the West during the Cold War, said that he became sick after taking the pills at his home in southern England on Oct. 31.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, In Bulgaria gunmen killed Georgy Stoyev, the country’s best-known author of books on the mafia. The night before, Borislav Georgiev, the chief executive of a large energy company, was killed in his apartment building with two bullets to the head.
(http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iOiGGOjL2rCkZuEhCa9kkLtaA5LA)
2008 Apr 7, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said Zhang Rongkun, a Shanghai tycoon, has been sentenced to 19 years in prison in a pension funds scandal that toppled the city's communist party chief.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, China and New Zealand signed a free-trade agreement effective October 1.
(www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-04/07/content_6596491.htm)(WSJ, 4/8/08, p.A14)
2008 Apr 7, A Chinese fishing boat capsized after colliding with a South Korean cargo ship off South Korea's southernmost island, leaving six Chinese sailors missing.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition force, called on Egyptians to boycott local council elections due on Tuesday in protest at the disqualification of most of its candidates.
(Reuters, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, The EU opened the way for air travelers to use mobile phones to talk, text or send e-mails on planes throughout Europe's airspace.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Security officials extinguished the Olympic torch three times as protests against China's human rights record turned a relay through Paris into a chaotic series of stops and starts. France's former sports minister, Jean-Francois Lamour, said that though the torch had been put out, the Olympic flame itself still burned in the lantern where it is kept overnight and on airplane flights.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, In Haiti protesters angered by high food prices flooded the streets of Port-au-Prince, forcing businesses and schools to close as unrest spread from the countryside. Witnesses said at least one person was killed by hotel security guards during a protest in the southern city of Les Cayes.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 7, Iraq’s prime minister issued his strongest warning yet to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to disband his Mahdi Army militia or face political isolation. The Sadrists said a move to ban them from elections would be unconstitutional. Hospital officials said nine more people were killed, including five children and two women, and dozens wounded as gunbattles continued. That pushed the two-day death toll to at least 25.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas resumed face-to-face negotiations, trying to push forward peace efforts after nearly two months marred by heavy Gaza Strip violence and new Israeli plans to expand settlements.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Italian police arrested 38 suspects in a sweep against a clan of the 'ndrangheta organized crime syndicate accused of murder, extortion and arms and drug trafficking.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Kosovo’s leaders signed the country’s new Constitution.
(SFC, 4/8/08, p.A3)
2008 Apr 7, In Morocco 9 Islamists serving long sentences for the deadly 2003 Casablanca bombings escaped from Kenitra prison, north of Rabat. In January, 2009, Hicham Alami one of the escapees who had been sentenced to life, was captured in Algeria and returned to Morocco.
(AFP, 4/7/08)(AP, 1/9/09)
2008 Apr 7, Nepal was rocked by two bombings, the latest violence to hit campaigning for this week's vote on the country's political future following a peace deal with Maoist rebels.
(AFP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Spanish officials said 2 people in Spain have died of the human variant of mad cow disease, in the first such fatalities since 2005. The two new victims apparently contracted the disease prior to 2001 and health controls on livestock and meat production are much tighter now than they were then. Spain has reported more than 700 cases of mad cow disease since it was first detected in this country in 2000.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Switzerland's Novartis AG said it will spend about $39 billion in a two-step bid for a majority stake in U.S. eye-care company Alcon.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, It was reported that Thailand’s market bubble in religious talismans had popped leaving many small business people in debt. The market in Jatukam Ramathep amulets had swelled to $1.5 billion in 2007.
(WSJ, 4/7/08, p.A1)
2008 Apr 7, In Yemen 7 people were arrested on suspicion of involvement in attacks the previous day against a residential complex for Westerners in San’a, Yemen's capital.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 7, Zimbabwe authorities released Barry Bearak, a NY Times journalist, along with an unidentified British citizen. They had been accused of reporting without official accreditation.
(WSJ, 4/8/08, p.A10)
2009 Apr 7, US military leaders said the Pentagon has spent over $100 million in the past 6 months responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks and other computer network problems.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.C3)
2009 Apr 7, In Alabama authorities found the body of Kevin Lee Garner (45) near his burned home in Priceville. The home had burned overnight. Garner's body was found following a day of searching for him in several north Alabama counties following the murders of four of his family members in the Greenhill community of Lauderdale County.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090408/ap_on_re_us/alabama_four_dead)(SFC, 4/8/09, p.A5)
2009 Apr 7, In southern California a gunman in Temecula opened fire at a Korean Christian retreat center, leaving one woman dead and four people injured.
(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 7, A lawsuit filed in US District Court in Denver by the SEC alleged that Shawn Merriman, an unlicensed broker, collected up to $20 million from investors in several states to support a lavish lifestyle. The former bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints allegedly operated a Ponzi scheme from his suburban Denver home for about 15 years, bilking investors out of millions of dollars to collect religious art and classic cars.
(AP, 4/9/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Texas Jon Dale Jones (46), a former Army hospital nurse, pleaded guilty to assault and theft. He was accused of infecting 15 patients with hepatitis C. Jones was arrested on federal charges in March of 2008 for using dirty needles to administer anesthesia, and accused of stealing painkillers for himself.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.A5)(www.mahalo.com/Jon_Dale_Jones)
2009 Apr 7, Vermont became the first state to legalize same sex marriage through a legislature’s vote.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.A5)
2009 Apr 7, GM and Segway announced that they are working together to develop a two-wheeled, two-seat electric vehicle designed to be a fast, safe, inexpensive and clean alternative to traditional cars and trucks for cities across the world. The project was called P.U.M.A. (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility).
(AP, 4/7/09)(WSJ, 4/8/09, p.B4)
2009 Apr 7, Samuel Beer, Harvard professor (1946-1982), died. His books included “British Politics in the Collectivist Age" (1965), which established him as the foremost scholar on modern British politics.
(Econ, 5/2/09, p.88)
2009 Apr 7, Jack Wrangler (b.1946 as John Robert Stillman), porn star and musical theater producer, died in Manhattan. He appeared in over 30 gay sex films and 20 straight films including “The Devil in Miss Jones" (1982).
(SFC, 4/10/09, p.B5)
2009 Apr 7, Australia announced plans to build a 30 billion US dollar broadband network, its biggest infrastructure project ever, opting to retain government control rather than contract out the deal.
(AFP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, Cuba’s President Raul Castro met with six visiting members of the Congressional Black Caucus for more than four hours, his first face-to-face discussions with US leaders since he became president last year. A "very healthy, very energetic" Fidel Castro asked visiting Congressional Black Caucus members what Cuba could do to help President Barack Obama improve bilateral relations during his first meeting with US officials since falling ill in 2006.
(AP, 4/7/09)(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 7, Ethiopia, the world's sixth largest coffee producer, said it did not intend to nationalize the coffee sector after revoking licenses of six exporters for hoarding the beans. PM Meles Zenawi had warned the exporters against hoarding coffee, accusing them of speculation in the world markets.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, A man opened fire at a courthouse in Bavaria, killing his sister-in-law and injuring two other people. He then shot himself dead. The incident appeared to stem from a long-running inheritance dispute.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, President Barack Obama flew into Iraq from Turkey on a trip shrouded in secrecy, for a brief look at a war he opposed as a candidate and now vows to end as commander in chief. A car bomb in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad killed at least nine people and wounded 18 others. A suicide car bomb killed three people at a police checkpoint in Fallujah. In Iskandariyah police found the bullet-riddled body a member of the Awakening Council, a group of former Sunni insurgents who sided with the US in the fight against al-Qaida in Iraq. The councilman was kidnapped a day earlier. A car bombing in Kazimiyah killed nine people, including a mother who was riding in a taxi with her infant son.
(AP, 4/7/09)(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 7, Israeli police fatally shot a Palestinian motorist as he tried to run over officers guarding the demolition of the home of a militant who killed three Israelis with a construction vehicle in July.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Moldova anti-communist protesters stormed the Parliament, hurling computers through shattered windows and setting fire to furniture in a violent demonstration against what they said were fraudulent elections. 3 people were left dead and hundreds were detained.
(AP, 4/7/09)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.46)
2009 Apr 7, In southern Pakistan police arrested five men alleged to be planning suicide attacks on the city of Karachi.
(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 7, Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori (70) was found guilty of murder and kidnapping for death squad activities during his 10-year rule during the 1990s. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. His daughter, Congresswoman Keiko Fujimori (33), said people's outrage over the "vengeful" verdict will propel her to Peru's presidency in 2011. Then she'll pardon him.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, Saudi authorities beheaded 3 Pakistanis convicted of killing a fellow Pakistani during a jewelry heist. This brought to 20 the number of beheadings in the kingdom this year.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In South Korea former Pres. Roh Moo-hyun announced that his wife had received money from Park Yeon-cha, chairman of Taekwang Industrial Co., a shoe manufacturer, several hours following the arrest of Chung Sangmoon, a former aide who had accepted the money for the president’s wife.
for the president’s wife.
(WSJ, 4/8/09, p.A8)
2009 Apr 7, In Thailand protesters surrounded the prime minister's car and smashed a window as he rode in it, escalating tensions a day before a massive anti-government rally that the leader said has sparked concerns of civil war.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Turkey Pres. Obama wrapped up his first European trip as president with a request of the world: Look past his nation's stereotypes and flaws. "You will find a partner and a supporter and a friend in the United States of America."
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, UNESCO awarded the World Press Freedom Prize to Lasantha Wickrematunge, a murdered Sri Lankan journalist, whose self-written obituary accused the government of silencing him. His self-written obituary was published three days after his murder in early January, in which no arrests have been made.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Venezuela legislators loyal to President Hugo Chavez approved a new law that erodes the authority of Caracas' opposition Mayor Antonio Ledezma by subordinating him to a government-appointed official.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2010 Apr 7, An Emeryville, Ca., drug analysis laboratory was raided as part of 3-year DEA investigation dubbed “Operation Lude Behavior." 3 men at the lab were among 22 charged in a nationwide Quaalude trafficking ring.
(SFC, 4/9/10, p.C5)
2010 Apr 7, Afghan and foreign troops killed several insurgents during an operation to capture a senior Taliban commander suspected of providing materials used in making roadside bombs. 2 insurgents were captured during the operation in Helmand province's Kajaki Sofla.
(AP, 4/9/10)
2010 Apr 7, Bangladesh deployed the army to guard water pumps in the capital Dhaka after acute shortages triggered widespread protests.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Brazil rains kept pummeling Rio de Janeiro as officials scrambled to restore transit after at least 96 people were killed by landslides and floods.
(Reuters, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, China and India signed an agreement to set up a hot line linking their top leaders.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, Innovation for the Development and Protection of the Environment (IDPE) said that from March 3-28 Congo government troops killed 7 hippos and 5 elephants as well as five antelopes, four baboons, three chimpanzees and two buffalo in Virunga national Park, a UNESCO world heritage. The soldiers "use their wives and cousins to sell the meat" in villages near the park, the IDPE said in a report that included photos of decomposing elephant carcasses.
(AFP, 4/8/10)
2010 Apr 7, Auto giants Renault, Nissan and Daimler launched a partnership to save billions of euros and accelerate sales of low-pollution electric cars.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Indonesia a magnitude 7.7 earthquake shook Indonesia's northwest island of Sumatra, triggering a small tsunami, snapping power lines and sending panicked residents rushing for higher ground.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Iraq spokesman Salah al-Obeidi announced that a survey of supporters of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr voted 24% for him to support Shiite politician Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who was interim prime minister from 2005 to 2006. Iraq's incumbent PM Nouri al-Maliki and his chief rival Ayad Allawi received only 10% and 9% of votes respectively. In northern Iraq 2 American soldiers died in combat while conducting a patrol.
(AP, 4/7/10)(AP, 4/8/10)
2010 Apr 7, Israel’s police said 6 Israelis have been detained on suspicion of running an international organ trafficking ring and breaking promises to donors to pay for their removed kidneys.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Kyrgyzstan anti-government unrest rocked Bishkek as thousands of protesters stormed the main government building, set fire to the prosecutor's office and looted state TV headquarters. At least 83 people were killed and some 1500 injured in clashes nationwide.
(AP, 4/7/10)(AP, 4/8/10)(Econ, 4/17/10, p.46)
2010 Apr 7, In Mexico police in the border state of Nuevo Leon found the bodies of a police chief and two police officers who had been kidnapped a day earlier. In the central state of Morelos, gunmen attacked the offices of federal prosecutors in the city of Cuernavaca, killing a guard. A bystander was killed during a shootout between gunmen and federal police in the town of Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas state, on the Guatemalan border.
(AP, 4/8/10)
2010 Apr 7, In northwestern Pakistan militants attached a bomb to a tanker carrying fuel to NATO forces in Afghanistan, destroying the vehicle and killing a boy who was riding in a van behind it.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, Somali pirates off the coast of Kenya hijacked the MV Yasin C, a Turkish vessel with 25 crew onboard, the day after a hostage drowned during a separate encounter between naval forces and a pirated vessel. The crew locked themselves in the engine room and realized that the pirates had left the ship on April 9.
(AP, 4/7/10)(AP, 4/10/10)
2010 Apr 7, South Africa's governing party said it has asked all its wings to stop singing controversial songs including one with lyrics that encourage people to shoot white farmers which some blame for the slaying of a white supremacist leader.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Spain Baltasar Garzon (54), the judge who became an international hero by going after Augusto Pinochet and Osama bin Laden, was indicted for having dared to investigate what is arguably Spain's own biggest unresolved case: atrocities committed during and after its ruinous Civil War.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Switzerland the Solar Impulse aircraft, a pioneering Swiss bid to fly around the world on solar energy, successfully completed its first test flight.
(AFP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, Thai PM Abhisit Vejjajiva declared a state of emergency in Bangkok, handing the army broad powers to restore order after anti-government protesters broke into Parliament, forcing some lawmakers to flee by helicopter.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2011 Apr 7, US House Republicans pushed a plan that would hold off for another week the threat of a government shutdown while Congress and the Obama administration struggle to reach a budget deal. Democrats pressing for a longer-term solution rejected the short-term approach as a political maneuver meant to blame them if the government closes its doors on April 9.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, In California an Asian citrus psyllid, which can carry a disease killing trees, was discovered in Ventura County. The county was put under quarantine for the tiny aphid-like pest.
(SFC, 4/11/11, p.A4)
2011 Apr 7, Six Afghan security personnel were killed as Taliban gunmen detonated a bomb hidden in an ambulance at a police centre near the key southern city of Kandahar. 3 insurgents were also killed. Demonstrations against the burning of a copy of the Koran by an American pastor entered a seventh day when several hundred people gathered for a peaceful protest outside a Kabul mosque. A roadside bomb killed a coalition service member in the south.
(AP, 4/7/11)(AP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 7, In Brazil a gunman opened fire in an elementary school in Rio de Janeiro. 12 children were killed including 10 girls and 2 boys between the ages of 12 and 15. Wellington Oliveira (23) shot and killed himself after being confronted by police.
(AP, 4/7/11)(AP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 7, In India Anna Hazare, a 73-year-old Gandhi devotee who has promised to fast until death unless the government toughens its anti-corruption laws, piled pressure on the graft-tainted administration. Hazare began his hunger strike in New Delhi on April 5. On April 9 the government conceded to Hazare’s demands and his hunger strike ended.
(AFP, 4/7/11)(Econ, 4/16/11, p.45)
2011 Apr 7, Israeli tanks quickly retaliated after an anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip struck a school bus in southern Israel, wounding two people, including one child. The critically injured boy (16) died of his wounds on April 17. The missile attack came hours after Israel carried out a series of airstrikes against tunnels it says are used by militants to smuggle weapons under the Egyptian border and carry out attacks. The tank fire killed a 50-year-old man and wounded 7 other people.
(AP, 4/7/11)(SFC, 4/18/11, p.A2)
2011 Apr 7, Forces allied with Ivory Coast's internationally recognized president Alassane Ouattara have stormed the gates of Laurent Gbagbo's home. French forces wearing night vision goggles rappelled from a helicopter to rescue the Japanese ambassador and 7 others, as strongman leader Laurent Gbagbo remained in an underground bunker amid the fighting.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, Japan was rattled by a strong 7.1 magnitude aftershock and tsunami warning nearly a month after a devastating earthquake and tsunami flattened the northeastern coast. At least 4 people died in the aftershock, the worst since the March 11 9.0 quake.
(AP, 4/7/11)(AFP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 7, In Jordan Mohammed Abdul-Karim (45) set himself on fire outside the prime minister’s office and was in critical condition with 3rd degree burns to his face and body. On April 20 a forensics official said Abdul-Karim has died of his wounds.
(SFC, 4/8/11, p.A2)(AP, 4/20/11)
2011 Apr 7, Kosovo’s parliament elected Atifete Jahjaga (35) as its first woman president.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atifete_Jahjaga)
2011 Apr 7, A NATO air strike killed at least five rebels near the Libyan port of Brega. Insurgents reported that Muammar Gaddafi's forces killed five more in a bombardment of besieged Misrata. NATO blamed forces loyal to Gaddafi for a fire in the Sarir oilfield, and denied the Western military alliance had launched air strikes in the area.
(Reuters, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, Mexican security forces reported that a series of eight burial pits have been found in Tamaulipas state, one of which contained 43 bodies and the others 16 corpses. The find was made near the ranch where drug cartel gunmen less than a year ago massacred 72 migrants who were trying to reach the United States. 14 suspects linked to the killing were under arrest.
(AP, 4/7/11)(SFC, 4/8/11, p.A6)
2011 Apr 7, Pakistani troops came under fire in the Pazai area of the Mohmand agency. Troops killed 10 militants and called for air support that left over 44 more dead.
(SFC, 4/9/11, p.A2)
2011 Apr 7, In Peru 2 protesters were fatally shot and a dozen others injured in a clash between police and peasants opposing a planned copper mine on the southern coast.
(SFC, 4/8/11, p.A2)
2011 Apr 7, In the Philippines Scott McMahon of Seattle was detained on charges of rape after he reportedly filed a case against her for allegedly traumatizing his young son. On August 2, 2016, McMahon was freed following his acquittal.
(AP, 8/2/16)
2011 Apr 7, Amnesty International urged Serbian authorities to "take urgent and immediate action" to halt forced evictions of Roma, also known as Gypsies, from their settlements in the capital Belgrade and prevent "systematic discrimination" against them.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, In South Korea a mathematics student (19) at a prestigious engineering college jumped to his death from a high-rise apartment one day after meeting the school psychiatrist. He was distressed over low grades. Three other students have killed themselves since January at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
(AP, 4/15/11)
2011 Apr 7, Spain said around 30 former Cuban political prisoners and 200 relatives will be brought to Madrid, the largest group yet to arrive since the two countries agreed to the transfers.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, Northern Sudanese Armed Forces have deployed two Mi-24 helicopter gunships and at least nine T-55 tanks about 60 miles (100 km) from Abyei's border according to the US-based Satellite Sentinel Project.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, Syria’s Pres. Bashar Assad granted citizenship to thousands of Kurds living in a northeastern province. Kurds, the largest ethnic minority in Syria, made up 15 percent of the country's 23 million population and have long complained of neglect and discrimination. Assad also sacked Governor Mohammad Iyad Ghaza of central Homs province, the scene of clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces in the past three weeks.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, Thailand authorities seized 1,800 Bengal monitor lizards being smuggled on pickup trucks to the capital. Their meat could sell for $7.50-$15 per pound ($16-$33 per kg) in China, making them worth more than $60,000.
(AP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 7, UAR blogger and a human rights activist Ahmed Mansour said authorities have launched an "unprecedented campaign of outrages insults and threats" against him since he signed a petition calling for political reform.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, A blackout hit a large swath of Venezuela, darkening street lights, shutting down the Caracas subway and prompting the government to announce temporary rationing measures. A forest fire apparently caused the problem by overheating major transmission lines in western Venezuela and knocking them offline.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, The Yemeni opposition welcomed an offer by Arab Gulf states to mediate between the president and opposition protesters who have demanded Ail Abdullah Saleh step down after 32 years in power.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, A Zimbabwe court ordered militant supporters of President Mugabe to stop exhuming hundreds of skeletons they say were the victims of colonial-era massacres, a project that critics say is stoking racial hatred in Zimbabwe.
(AP, 4/8/11)
2012 Apr 7, In the SF Bay Area the town of Hercules, population 24,000, was reported to have recently sold a pair of 4-story, half-finished apartment buildings for 425,000. The city had already sunk 38 million into the project, which it could not sustain.
(SFC, 4/7/12, p.A1)
2012 Apr 7, In Afghanistan 3 employees of an Afghan construction company died when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb.
(AP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, Britain's Home Office interior ministry said it was investigating reports that hacking group Anonymous had attacked its website over the government's plans to boost Internet surveillance.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, Greek protesters marching in memory of a man who killed himself over financial woes that he blamed on the government attacked a policeman in Athens, leaving him bloodied and stealing his bulletproof vest.
(AP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, Indian gold jewelers halted a three-week nationwide strike after the government promised to consider their demands to scrap new duties on the multi-billion-dollar market.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, An online video showed Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, Saddam Hussein's vice president and the highest-ranking member of his regime still on the run, in what appears to be his first video message since 2003.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, In Pakistan at least 135 people were buried when the wall of snow engulfed a military complex on the northern tip of the divided Kashmir region.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, Gaza's Hamas rulers executed three men in dawn hangings. All three were charged with murder and charges against one included spying for Israel.
(AP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, In Malawi Joyce Banda was sworn as the new president, the nation's first female leader. She called for reconciliation after the divisive Bingu wa Mutharika died in office.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, Myanmar's Pres. Thein Sein held his first meeting with Karen rebels, as the government intensifies efforts to bolster peace with the country's oldest insurgent group.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, In Nigeria 22 people were killed and 31 others were injured in Benue state when their St Robert's Catholic Church caved in on them during Easter vigil in Adamgbe.
(AFP, 4/8/12)
2012 Apr 7, In Syria some 86 civilians were killed as regime forces pressed a protest crackdown three days ahead of a deadline to cease fire and pull back. 16 rebels and 17 members of the security forces were also killed nationwide. The head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation said at least one million Syrians affected by violence need urgent humanitarian aid worth $70 million. Thousands of demonstrators turned out in Damascus to show their backing for President al-Assad's ruling Baath party on the 65th anniversary of its creation.
(AFP, 4/7/12)(AFP, 4/8/12)
2012 Apr 7, Several Tunisian centrist parties including the center-left PDP agreed to combine forces and gain more clout in a country increasingly challenged by Islamists ahead of general elections. A military appeals court in Tunis upheld the convictions of Tunisia's ousted president and his top officials for torturing army officers over an alleged 1991 coup plot. Baton-wielding police fired teargas to disperse a demonstration by thousands of jobless Tunisian graduates in the capital Tunis.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez flew back to Cuba late today for another round of radiation therapy.
(AP, 4/8/12)
2012 Apr 7, Yemen's airport in Sanaa was shut down after forces loyal to a sacked general close to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh surrounded it and threatened to shoot down planes. A government air raid late today killed 16 terrorists belonging to Al-Qaeda network in Kud near Zinjibar. A US drone reportedly killed eight Al-Qaeda suspects when it fired a missile at their vehicle in the eastern province of Shabwa.
(AFP, 4/7/12)(AFP, 4/8/12)
2013 Apr 7, In California it was made public that a federal magistrate has ruled that federal authorities broke the law when they leased land to oil drillers without studying the possible risks of hydraulic fracturing.
(SFC, 4/9/13, p.A1)
2013 Apr 7, Britain pledged $102 million to Sudan over three years, with about half going to Darfur.
(AP, 4/8/13)
2013 Apr 7, In Halifax, Canada, Rehtaeh Parsons (17) died after being removed from life support following a suicide attempt by hanging on April 4. She had killed herself after a photo of her allegedly being sexually assaulted in Nov, 2011, circulated online. In August one man (18) was charged with two counts of distributing child pornography and the second man (18) was charged with making child pornography and distributing it.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Rehtaeh_Parsons)(AP, 8/9/13)
2013 Apr 7, China warned against "troublemaking" on its doorstep, in an apparent rebuke to North Korea, and the US said it was postponing a missile test to help calm high tension on the divided Korean peninsula.
(Reuters, 4/7/13)
2013 Apr 7, In Egypt clashes clashes broke out following the funeral of four Christians killed in sectarian violence a day earlier. Two more people were killed and another 89 injured outside Cairo's main Coptic cathedral.
(AP, 4/8/13)
2013 Apr 7, Egyptian train drivers and conductors announced they were on strike to press demands for better pay. A 10% raise was rejected by the train drivers and conductors as too little.
(AP, 4/7/13)
2013 Apr 7, In France Wilfred De Bruijn was beaten unconscious near his home in central Paris, sustaining five fractures in his head and face, abrasions and a lost tooth. His boyfriend, who was also beaten up, said he witnessed three to four men shouting "Hey, look they're gays," before they attacked. A photo of the victim went viral on social media.
(AP, 4/10/13)
2013 Apr 7, In Iraq 3 bombs exploded in Mosul killing 4 security officers and wounding 7 other people.
(SFC, 4/8/13, p.A2)
2013 Apr 7, Israeli researchers and Jewish leaders reported a 30 percent jump in anti-Semitic violence and vandalism last year, topped by a deadly school shooting in France, and expressed alarm about the rise of far-right parties in Hungary, Greece and other countries.
(AP, 4/7/13)
2013 Apr 7, Montenegro held elections.
(AP, 4/20/13)
2013 Apr 7, Pakistan's former military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf was given approval to run for parliament next month, a victory for him in what has otherwise been a bumpy return to the country after more than four years in self-imposed exile.
(AP, 4/7/13)
2013 Apr 7, Missionary Jerry Krause (54) disappeared near Sao Tome island as he flew in a twin-engine Beechcraft 1900C from South Africa to Mali.
(AP, 4/17/13)
2013 Apr 7, Syrian government airstrikes killed at least 20 people as the army pressed ahead with its campaign to crush the rebellion against Pres. Bashar Assad. In Daraa a man was shot dead by an army sniper.
(AP, 4/7/13)
2013 Apr 7, Ukraine’s Pres. Viktor Yanukovych pardoned former Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko and former environment minister Heorhiy Filipchuk.
(SFC, 4/8/13, p.A2)
2014 Apr 7, The US approved a bill barring Iranian diplomat Hamid Abutalebi from entering the country. Officials objected to his selection as Iran’s new UN ambassador because of his alleged participation in a Muslim student group that held 52 Americans hostage in the 1979 seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran.
(AP, 4/9/14)
2014 Apr 7, Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce.com, and his wife Lynne announced a 2nd $100 million donation to the UCSF and Children’s Hospital of Oakland, which formed an alliance in January for research and medical care.
(SFC, 4/8/14, p.A1)
2014 Apr 7, Researchers at Codenomicon, a security outfit, revealed the Heartbleed bug, a software flaw that made up to two-thirds of the world’s websites vulnerable to hackers.
(Econ, 4/12/14, p.65)
2014 Apr 7, In Washington state the death toll from the March 22 mudslide rose to 33 with 12 people still missing. As of April 17 all 39 recovered victims were identified and 4 remained missing.
(SFC, 4/8/14, p.A6)(SFC, 4/18/14, p.A7)
2014 Apr 7, Preliminary tallies from Afghanistan's presidential election showed former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah leading in parts of Kabul but, with ballot counting likely to last weeks. Preliminary results were not due until April 24.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, In southern Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed at least 15 people traveling in vehicles that had been diverted from a main road after an earlier attack in Kandahar province.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Peaches Geldof (25), the daughter of Irish musician and Band Aid founder Bob Geldof and TV presenter Paula Yates, was pronounced dead by paramedics at her home in Wrotham, southeast of London. On July 23 a coroner ruled that she was a heroin addict and died of a drug overdose.
(AP, 4/8/14)(AFP, 7/23/14)
2014 Apr 7, Quebec voters gave a resounding no to the prospect of holding a third referendum on independence from Canada, handing the main separatist party in the French-speaking province one of its worst electoral defeats ever. Liberals got 41.5 percent of the vote and took 70 seats in the 125-member National Assembly.
(AP, 4/8/14)
2014 Apr 7, In China the Xiahaizi mine in Yunnan province suddenly filled with water following an explosion, leaving 22 miners trapped. The death toll rose to 20 with the recovery of another 14 bodies nearly two weeks after the accident.
(AFP, 4/18/14)
2014 Apr 7, Ecuador issued a letter ordering the US Embassy's military group, about 20 Defense Department employees, to leave the country by month's end, in a further indication of strained relations.
(AP, 4/26/14)
2014 Apr 7, An Egyptian court sentenced four men to up to eight years in prison for practicing homosexuality.
(AFP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, German authorities said reclusive collector Cornelius Gurlitt, who hoarded hundreds of valuable artworks at his Munich home, has agreed to cooperate in efforts to determine which pieces were seized by the Nazis.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, India began to hold the world's biggest election. Hindu nationalist opposition candidate Narendra Modi held a strong lead but was likely to fall short of a majority.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, India's Sun Pharmaceutical Industries said it is buying troubled generic drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories from Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo in deal valuing it a $3.2 billion. In 2008 Sankyo paid $4.6 billion for Ranbaxy.
(AP, 4/7/14)(Econ, 4/12/14, p.67)
2014 Apr 7, Film censors in Indonesia and Malaysia banned the biblical epic "Noah," saying that the portrayal of the ark-building prophet by Russell Crowe was against Islamic laws. Depictions of any prophet are shunned in Islam to avoid worship of a person rather than God.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Iraq a suicide car bomb attack on a police checkpoint near Samarra killed 5 people, including 3 policemen.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Japan and Australia clinched a basic trade deal to cut import tariffs. US and Japanese officials stepped up efforts to reach a parallel agreement that would re-energize stalled talks on a broader regional pact.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Kuwait agreed to supply Egypt with 85,000 barrels of oil daily and 1.5 million tons of fuel for three years as part of a newly agreed commercial deal. The supplies would be valued at market prices and delivered by the end of 2016.
(AFP, 4/8/14)
2014 Apr 7, Latvia said it is joining Lithuania in banning Russian state TV broadcasts because it found that several programs about the Ukraine crisis were tendentious and not in the Baltic nation's security interests. A three-month suspension of RTR Rossiya broadcasts will begin April 8.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Lebanon at least 8 people were killed in fighting between Palestinian factions at the Mieh Mieh refugee camp near Sidon.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Libya residents of the Benghazi observed a general strike to protest against militant violence, as youths blocked streets of the capital in a show of support.
(AFP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Morocco police in a crackdown on violent crime began arresting so-called “Tchermil" (a slang Moroccan term for marinated meat) hooligans. By April 25 police arrested 83 men in Casablanca alone and dramatically reduced muggings.
(SFC, 5/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Apr 7, A UN human rights envoy said severe shortages of food, water and medical care for Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar are part of a long history of persecution against the religious minority that could amount to "crimes against humanity," an allegation denied by the government.
(AP, 4/8/14)
2014 Apr 7, Pakistani security forces killed 30 separatist militants in an offensive in Baluchistan, in one of the biggest clashes in months in the gas-rich province.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, A judge in Puerto Rico ordered a diocese to provide state prosecutors with all confidential documents related to an ongoing sexual abuse probe. The Diocese of Arecibo has defrocked six priests accused of sex abuse, and prosecutors are investigating at least 11 other priests facing similar accusations.
(AP, 4/8/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Rwanda Cassien Ntamuhanga, head of a Christian radio station, disappeared in Kigali without a trace after a ceremony commemorating the 1994 genocide.
(AFP, 4/9/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Somalia two men working for the United Nations were shot dead at Galkayo airport. Former British police officer Simon Davis (57) and his French colleague, researcher Clement Gorrissen (28), were working on links between money transfer systems and piracy.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)(AFP, 4/9/14)
2014 Apr 7, Police in South Africa arrested Makhele Lehlohonolo Joseph Scott (27), a fugitive from neighboring Lesotho. He had escaped from a prison where he was awaiting trial after allegedly confessing to cannibalism and two murders in 2012.
(AP, 4/25/14)
2014 Apr 7, Spain said it has dismantled a group it accused of plotting to send industrial equipment to Iran that could be used for weapon manufacture in violation of international sanctions. Four suspects were arrested.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Sri Lanka's foreign minister says that his country will not cooperate with the United Nations human rights chief when she begins an investigation into alleged war crimes from the island nation's civil war.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Swiss-based Holcim and its French counterpart, Lafarge, two of the world's largest suppliers of building materials, announced plans for a merger of equals.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Syria the strategic area of Rankus in Qalamun went under heavy regime shelling and continuous air raids, ahead of a plan to storm it.
(AFP, 4/8/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Syria a masked gunman assassinated Jesuit Father Francis Van Der Lugt (75), a well-known, elderly Dutch priest, shooting him in the head in the garden of a monastery where he lived in Homs.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Ukraine pro-Russian separatists who seized a provincial administration building in the eastern city of Donetsk proclaimed the region independent.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Ukraine's ecology and natural resources minister estimated on that Kiev had lost natural resources and related assets worth 127 billion hryvnias ($10.8 bln) when Russia annexed the Crimea region.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2015 Apr 7, It was reported that the Obama administration has notified Congress that it is selling Pakistan 15 Viper attack helicopters, air-to-surface missiles and other forms of military assistance valued at $952 million.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, In Chicago incumbent Mayor Rohm Emanuel was re-elected with 56% of the vote. Jesus Garcia took 44% in a 40% turnout.
(Econ., 4/11/15, p.29)
2015 Apr 7, In central Illinois a private plane returning from the NCAA tournament in Indianapolis crashed killing all 7 people onboard. The dead included Illinois State University’s associate head basketball coach and a deputy athletics director.
(SFC, 4/8/15, p.A7)
2015 Apr 7, Shares of Arena Pharmaceuticals rose after the drug developer said it received an additional patent for its weight loss drug Belviq.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, Bristol-Myers Squibb said it has agreed to acquire a stake in UniQure, to get access to its gene therapy for congestive cardiac failure.
(SFC, 4/8/15, p.C2)
2015 Apr 7, FedEx said it has agreed to take over TNT Express, a Dutch delivery firm, for $4.8 billion in an all cash offer of $8.75 per TNT share.
(SFC, 4/8/15, p.C3)
2015 Apr 7, Albania’s PM Edi Rama said the unification of Albania and Serbia's majority-Albanian former province of Kosovo is "inevitable", whether it happens through membership of the EU or not. The suggestion was denounced in Belgrade.
(Reuters, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, Armenian police detained and raided the offices and homes of four opposition activists suspected of plotting riots on the centennial of the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians that Armenia describes as genocide. The arrested activists of the Founding Parliament opposition group, included its leader, Jirair Sefilian.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, China's finance ministry said Iran has been approved as a founding member of the Beijing-backed Asian Infrastructure Bank (AIIB).
(AFP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, The French presidency under Francois Hollande announced the declassification of archives on Rwanda for the period 1990-95. In 2017 France's highest court ruled that researcher Francois Graner could be denied access to sensitive archives concerning the 1994 genocide in Rwanda because of a law protecting presidential archives for 25 years following the death of a head of state. As former Pres. Mitterrand died in 1996, his archives should become available in 2021.
(AP, 9/15/17)
2015 Apr 7, India’s National Green Tribunal passed a series of stringent measures aimed at curbing air pollution in New Delhi.
(SSFC, 4/12/15, p.A4)
2015 Apr 7, In southern India police killed 5 prisoners, including accused terrorist Syed Viqaruddin, when they tried to escape from a police van in Telangana state.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, In southeastern India police shot and killed at least 20 workers, hired by smugglers of endangered red sandalwood trees, in Andhra Pradesh state. At one of two sites seven of nine workers were shot in the face or back of the head.
(SFC, 4/8/15, p.A4)(SSFC, 4/12/15, p.A4)
2015 Apr 7, The Islamic State group launched English-language radio news bulletins on its al-Bayan radio network. The first bulletin provided an overview of their activities in Iraq, Syria and Libya. An IS group online propaganda video showed the beheading of four men for armed robbery and murder in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh.
(AP, 4/7/15)(AFP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, In Lebanon 3 unidentified militants were killed in clashes with government soldiers who launched an operation near the Syrian border to retake control of a hilltop.
(Reuters, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, Malaysia revived detention without trial when lawmakers approved the Prevention of Terrorism Act bill, that the government said was needed to fight Islamic militants. Critics assailed it as a giant step backward for human rights in the country.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, In Mexico armed robbers made off with 7,000 ounces of gold worth $8.5 million at current prices from Canadian firm McEwen Mining's mine in Sinaloa.
(AFP, 4/8/15)
2015 Apr 7, In Nepal stone-throwing opposition protesters led by Maoists clashed with police in Kathmandu as they enforced a three-day nationwide shutdown of schools, business and transport in the latest violence to mar talks over a new constitution.
(Reuters, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, Dutch businessman Willy Selten was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. He was at the center of a Europe-wide fraud in which falsely labeled horsemeat led to thousands of tons of meat being recalled.
(Reuters, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, Panama's Electoral Tribunal lifted former President Ricardo Martinelli's immunity from prosecution, clearing the way for authorities to investigate him for alleged corruption.
(AP, 4/8/15)
2015 Apr 7, Romania's PM Victor Ponta announced that the sales tax on food and non-alcoholic drinks will be slashed by more than half this summer in an effort to generate jobs and help the poor.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, Russia’s State Duma voted overwhelmingly to strip Ilya Ponomarev of immunity against prosecution. The opposition lawmaker was the sole deputy last year to vote against the annexation of Crimea.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, In northern Syria two car bombs set off by Islamic State insurgents killed at least 32 people in Marea, including a senior rival fighter from al Qaeda's Nusra Front.
(Reuters, 4/8/15)(AFP, 4/8/15)
2015 Apr 7, In Tunisia 4 soldiers were killed and six wounded in an ambush in the Kasserine region where the military is battling jihadists. A 5th soldier died of his wounds the next day.
(AFP, 4/7/15)(AFP, 4/8/15)
2015 Apr 7, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani agreed to boost trade and signed a slew of deals at a meeting, but steered clear of directly addressing differences over conflict-ridden Yemen.
(Reuters, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, In central Yemen warplanes from a Saudi-led air coalition bombed a military base controlled by Houthi fighters and their army allies. A website of the Houthi-run defense ministry said two students were killed at a neighboring school. Suspected al Qaeda militants stormed a remote border post with Saudi Arabia, killing at least two soldiers including the senior border guard officer.
(Reuters, 4/7/15)
2016 Apr 7, The United States and its allies conducted 26 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
(Reuters, 4/8/16)
2016 Apr 7, A US appeals court ruled that Puerto Rico can't prohibit gay marriage.
(AP, 4/8/16)
2016 Apr 7, In San Francisco Luis Góngora Pat, a homeless Yucatecan Mayan, was killed by SFPD officers on Shotwell Street between 18th and 19th Streets. Officers claimed that Luis lunged at them with a knife. Eye witnesses that spoke to the media and to community members, including homeless witnesses, denied that Luis threatened officers in any way.
(https://justice4luis.org/luiss-story/)
2016 Apr 7, A Miami-Dade state attorney said 22 people are being charged in an int’l. money laundering case that funneled cash to drug trafficking cartels through Miami businesses. The undercover operation involved about $1 million a month in drug money throughout North America.
(SFC, 4/8/16, p.A6)
2016 Apr 7, Suth Dina, Cambodia's ambassador to South Korea, was charged with corruption-related offenses, following his arrest on April 4. Investigators said his assets increased by $3 million during his two years as envoy.
(AP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, The EU's executive said European Union states should agree on a common list of tax havens in the next semester and impose sanctions on countries that hide EU-taxable revenues in the wake of the Panama leaks.
(Reuters, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Two Indonesian military skydivers plunged to their deaths during an airshow rehearsal in Jakarta.
(AP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Kosovo's powerful former premier Hashim Thaci was sworn in as president in a session boycotted by opposition parties which dispute his election to the top job.
(AFP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, In Kosovo Milovan Bojovic, a former Serb general suspected of war crimes against ethnic Albanian civilians, was detained after illegally crossing into Kosovo at the Merdare border point.
(AP, 4/8/16)
2016 Apr 7, Morocco's official news agency said eight foreigners have been expelled for supporting prisoners convicted for their roles in deadly protests in Western Sahara.
(AP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi announced that her government plans to release all political prisoners as quickly as possible, making the declaration her first act in her newly created job as state counsellor.
(AP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, In Romania a businessman and five others suspected of defrauding a spa that dates from the Roman empire of 30 million euros (about $34 million) were detained. Iosif Armas, chairman of a company that manages the Herculaneum Spa, and other shareholders were suspected of illegally selling assets and taking out loans in the spa's name that could not be repaid.
(AP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Saudi King Salman started a five-day visit to Cairo in a show of support for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, with the leaders due to sign a raft of investment deals.
(AFP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Serbia's presidency defended its decision to decorate Sudan's president and genocide suspect Omar al-Bashir, saying he was honoured for refusing to recognise Kosovo.
(AFP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Syrian state television reported that Islamic State fighters have kidnapped 300 cement workers in an area northeast of Damascus where the militants launched an assault against government forces this week.
(Reuters, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, In Turkey Mustafa Tanriverdi, who headed a factory run by the state-owned Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation, was arrested in Ankara as he left a restaurant after arranging to sell the designs to an official of a US-based company for a total of 1.2 million Turkish lira ($420,000).
(AP, 4/8/16)
2016 Apr 7, Vietnam demanded China move a controversial oil rig on and abandon plans to start drilling in waters where jurisdiction is unclear, the latest sign of festering unease among the two communist neighbors.
(Reuters, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Vietnam’s rubber-stamp parliament elected Nguyen Xuan Phuc (61) as prime minister.
(SFC, 4/8/16, p.A2)
2017 Apr 7, President Donald Trump pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to do more to curb North Korea's nuclear program and help reduce the gaping US trade deficit with Beijing in talks as he toned down the strident anti-China rhetoric of his election campaign.
(Reuters, 4/8/17)
2017 Apr 7, The US Senate voted 54 to 45 to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court following a rules change a day earlier.
(SFC, 4/8/17, p.A7)
2017 Apr 7, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced 173 fellowships, each valued at about $50,000, to artists, writers and academics from the US and Canada.
(SFC, 4/7/17, p.D3)
2017 Apr 7, Arizona’s Rep. Gov. Doug Ducey signed a major school voucher expansion bill that will extend eligibility to all 1.1 million state schoolchildren.
(SFC, 4/8/17, p.A6)
2017 Apr 7, California’s Gov. Jerry Brown declared an officials end to the state’s drought.
(SFC, 4/8/17, p.A1)
2017 Apr 7, In Maryland a federal judge approved an agreement between Baltimore and the US Dept. of Justice to overhaul the city’s police department.
(SFC, 4/8/17, p.A5)
2017 Apr 7, In Oregon a small plane crashed near Harrisburg as it approached the Eugene Airport under high winds. Four people were killed.
(SSFC, 4/9/17, p.A6)
2017 Apr 7, In South Carolina four inmates were found dead at Kirkland Correctional Institution in Columbia. Two convicts serving life sentences were soon charged with the murders.
(SFC, 4/8/17, p.A5)(SSFC, 4/9/17, p.A12)
2017 Apr 7, In Texas a woman fatally shot her stepfather, critically injured her mother and killed two other people in the Houston area before killing herself.
(SSFC, 4/9/17, p.A6)
2017 Apr 7, The Basque separatist group ETA, which has promised to give up all its remaining arms by April 8, said it has handed over the weapons to members of "civil society" in France. Analysts estimated ETA's arsenal at 130 handguns and two tons of explosives.
(AFP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, In Brazil six inmates died at the Unidade Prisional do Puraquequara in Manaus where riots killed dozens of prisoners earlier this year. The circumstances of the deaths were unclear.
(AP, 4/8/17)
2017 Apr 7, In Cambodia Tan Saravuth, a Cambodian-American man, was arrested in Phnom Penh for procuring children for prostitution, a crime punishable by seven to 15 years in prison.
(AP, 4/11/17)
2017 Apr 7, The European Commission cleared the multi-billion dollar buy-out bid for European pay-TV giant Sky by 21st Century Fox without conditions as the tie-up does not undercut competition.
(AFP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, The German government announced steps to choke off state campaign finance for the far-right NPD party, after a failed court bid to outlaw the xenophobic fringe group. The group numbered around 6,000 members.
(AFP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, Doctors Without Borders said they have begun a measles vaccination program in Guinea after 14 deaths and 3,400 cases were confirmed this year.
(SFC, 4/8/17, p.A2)
2017 Apr 7, Indonesian counter-terrorism police arrested three suspected militants who were planning to attack a police station in East Java.
(AP, 4/8/17)
2017 Apr 7, Kosovo President Hashim Thaci bowed to pressure from traditional allies the United States and NATO by putting off plans to establish an army strongly opposed by the country's minority Serbs.
(Reuters, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, In Myanmar a ferry boat carrying wedding guests capsized after colliding with a boat carrying gravel in the Ngawun river of the Ayeyarwaddy delta, killing at least 20 people and leaving more than a dozen missing.
(AFP, 4/8/17)
2017 Apr 7, Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev complained that US cruise missile strikes on a Syrian airbase were one step away from clashing with the Russian military. Russia the US-led coalition of its intent to suspend a communication channel for avoiding air accidents in the crowded airspace over Syria.
(Reuters, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, Tens of thousands of South Africans demonstrated peacefully in a national outpouring of anger at scandal-tainted Pres. Jacob Zuma. A second agency lowered the country's credit rating to junk status a week after the firing of the respected finance minister.
(AP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, In Spain Russian computer programmer, Pyotr Levashov, was arrested in the city of Barcelona. Levashov was suspected of being involved in hacking attacks linked to alleged interference in last year's US election.
(Reuters, 4/9/17)
2017 Apr 7, In Sweden a truck slammed into a crowd of people outside a busy department store in central Stockholm, killing two Swedes, a British man and a Belgian woman. PM Stefan Lofven described it as a "terror attack". Police soon detained suspect Rakhmat Akilov (39), a native of Uzbekistan, who had been denied asylum last year. Uzbekistan’s foreign minister later said Akilov had been recruited by the Islamic State and had encouraged fellow nationals to fight for the IS in Syria. A 5th victim died three weeks later of her injuries.
(AFP, 4/7/17)(AP, 4/8/17)(Reuters, 4/11/17)(SFC, 4/15/17, p.A3)(AP, 4/28/17)
2017 Apr 7, In Syria opposition fighters fired shells at a government-controlled neighborhood of the capital Damascus killing one person and wounding 20.
(AP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, The US blasted Syria’s Shayrat air base early today (local time) with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. 58 of 59 missiles struck their intended targets. Seven people were reported killed.
(AP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, In southern Thailand suspected Muslim insurgents set off dozens of bombs, bringing down power lines and setting tires on fire to block roads.
(AP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, Ugandan police detained an academic who has been critical online of what she calls "despotic family rule" in this East African country. Stella Nyanzi, a research fellow at Uganda's Makerere University, was arrested for violating a law against misusing computers. On May 10 Nyanzi was freed on bail.
(AP, 4/9/17)(AP, 5/10/17)
2017 Apr 7, The UN Security Council called an emergency meeting to discuss the developments in Syria.
(AP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, Venezuelan authorities banned Henrique Capriles, a top opposition leader, from public office for 15 years. Capriles rejected the move and insisted he would retain his post as governor, branding Maduro a dictator.
(AFP, 4/8/17)
2018 Apr 7, In Illinois three passengers on a private bus were fatally shot. Rockford police identified passenger Raheem King as the shooter and he remained at large.
(SFC, 4/9/18, p.A4)
2018 Apr 7, In NYC an apartment fire on the 50th floor of Trump Tower left one person dead.
(SSFC, 4/8/18, p.A9)
2018 Apr 7, Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (72) turned himself in to police to begin a 12-year sentence for money laundering and corruption.
(AP, 4/8/18)
2018 Apr 7, British police said they are deploying 300 more officers on the streets of London this weekend to confront a spike in stabbing and shootings that has sparked fears about rising crime.
(AP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, Air France cancelled hundreds of its flights as pilots, cabin crew and ground staff pursued a fifth day of strikes aimed at securing higher pay.
(AFP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, In Germany Jens Ruether (48) drove a camper van into a group of people sitting outside a restaurant in Muenster, killing two people. He then shot himself dead. Authorities later said Ruether acted alone and appears to have had mental health problems. A third person died three weeks later from injuries sustained in the crash.
(Reuters, 4/8/18)(AP, 4/26/18)
2018 Apr 7, India agreed to construct a rail link to Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, and to open up inland waterways in the landlocked Himalayan nation. Analysts said the latest Indian move was spurred by China's expansive infrastructure projects in Nepal as both Asian giants jostle for influence.
(Reuters, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, In India a court in Jodhpur granted bail to Bollywood superstar Salman Khan, who will be allowed to remain free while he appeals his conviction on charges of poaching rare deer in a wildlife preserve two decades ago.
(AP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, In western Iraq a suicide attack targeting the Al-Hal political party headquarters in Hit, Anbar province, killed four people and injured seven others, including a candidate in polls set for May.
(AFP, 4/8/18)
2018 Apr 7, Japan activated its first marine unit since World War Two trained to counter invaders occupying Japanese islands along the edge of the East China Sea that Tokyo fears are vulnerable to attack by China.
(Reuters, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, In western Japan Yoshitane Yamasaki (73), a father who allegedly confined his mentally ill son, now 42, in a small cage for more than two decades, was arrested.
(AFP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, North and South Korea held talks over establishing a telephone hotline between their leaders and other communication issues ahead of a rare summit between the rivals later this month.
(AP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, Pakistan's PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said Afghanistan has accepted his offer to revive stalled peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
(AP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, A Pakistani government official says Indian troops have fired across the Line of Control in the disputed Kashmir region, killing a woman and wounding six others.
(AP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, In Pakistan a car carrying American diplomat Col. Joseph Emanuel Hall accidently hit a Pakistani motorcyclist in Islamabad, killing him on the spot. Pakistani TV stations soon aired footage showing a white vehicle running a red light and striking a motorcyclist. The family of the motorcyclist, identified by police as Ateeq Baig (22), lodged charges against the US. Police soon requested a travel ban on Hall.
(AP, 4/7/18)(AP, 4/8/18)(AP, 4/10/18)
2018 Apr 7, Palestinian Yaser Murtaja (30), a cameraman for Palestinian Ain Media, died after being wounded by Israeli fire a day earlier while covering deadly protests along the Israel-Gaza border.
(Reuters, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, In South Sudan armed men fired at the vehicle marked with logos of the Catholic Organization for Relief and Development Aid as it travelled on a road near the town of Bentiu and one of the workers died. A local worker with the UNIDO organization was killed near Leer town in Unity state.
(http://tinyurl.com/ya6c24je)(SFC, 4/11/18, p.A2)
2018 Apr 7, In Switzerland Karl-Erivan Haub (58), heir to the German Tengelmann retail empire, disappeared in Zermatt while training for a ski mountaineering race on the famous Matterhorn peak. A search for him was officially called off after six months.
(AP, 4/11/18)(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Apr 7, Syrian government forces pressed their offensive against the last rebel-held town in eastern Ghouta near Damascus under the cover of airstrikes as shelling of civilian areas on both sides claimed more lives. the Britain-based Observatory said another eight civilians were killed as more bombing raids slammed into Douma. The Army of Islam said its fighters repelled all government attacks that began a day earlier, adding that 17 Syrian soldiers were killed. An alleged chlorine gas attack killed at least 40 people in Douma. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 80 people were killed in Douma.
(AP, 4/7/18)(AFP, 4/7/18)(AP, 4/8/18)
2018 Apr 7, Taiwan's Central News Agency said that Taiwan's Ministry of National Defence confirmed the US Department of State had agreed to grant the license needed to sell the technology to Taiwan, so the self-ruled island could build its own submarines.
(Reuters, 4/9/18)
2018 Apr 7, Turkey's interior ministry said authorities will deport close to 600 illegal Afghan migrants in eastern Turkey back to Kabul this weekend.
(Reuters, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, Turkey's military said some 108 Kurdish militants have been "neutralized" in operations targeting southeast Turkey and northern Iraq over the past week.
(AP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, The Vatican police force arrested Msgr. Carlo Alberto Capella, who once worked at its US embassy and was recalled last year after the US State Department said the priest may have violated child pornography laws.
(Reuters, 4/7/18)
2019 Apr 7, US Pres. Donald Trump announced in a tweet that US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan would be taking over as acting head of the department. This followed the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen amid President Donald Trump's growing frustration and bitterness over the number of Central American families crossing the southern border.
(AP, 4/8/19)
2019 Apr 7, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was named the recipient of the 2019 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.
(SFC, 4/8/19, p.A5)
2019 Apr 7, In Arizona three people were killed and three firefighters seriously injured when a pickup truck collided with a fire engine at an intersection in Phoenix.
(SFC, 4/9/19, p.A6)
2019 Apr 7, In Australia Dutchman Wiebe Wakker completed an epic 95,000 km (59,000 mile) journey by electric car in Sydney in a bid to prove the viability of such vehicles in tackling climate change.
(AFP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, In Brazil thousands of supporters, many chanting "Free Lula!," protested outside the jail where former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva is being held on the anniversary of his incarceration.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Britain's Jewish Labour Movement, which is affiliated to the main opposition Labour Party, passed a motion of no confidence in party leader Jeremy Corbyn over his handling of anti-Semitism complaints.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, In Cuba more than 400 animal-lovers peacefully marched more than a mile through Havana, shouting slogans and waving signs calling for an end to animal cruelty in their country.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, In Egypt a police officer and his driver were killed when unknown gunmen opened fire on a patrol in Cairo.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, A majority of Iranian parliamentarians said Iran will take reciprocal action against the United States if Washington designates the elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as terrorists.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Authorities in India's portion of disputed Kashmir began enforcing a ban on the movement of civilian vehicles on a key highway to keep it open exclusively for military and paramilitary convoys two days a week.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Eastern Libyan forces carried out an air strike on the southern part of Tripoli, escalating an operation to take the capital despite calls for a truce from the UN. At least 35 people, including civilians, have been killed on both sides over the last 4 days.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Maldives President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih's party declared a sweeping parliamentary election victory that could give him a free hand in efforts to restore political freedoms and tackle corruption.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, UN and government officials said at least 847 people have been killed by Cyclone Idai, the flooding it caused and heavy rains after it hit Mozambique (602), Zimbabwe (259) and Malawi (60).
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, A presidential aide and the police chief said Nigeria has suspended mining in the restive northwestern state of Zamfara, amid concerns that illegal miners were connected to a surge in banditry.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, In northern Nigeria 14 people were killed in Katsina state in clashes between cattle thieves and a civilian militia armed by the government to support the security forces.
(AFP, 4/9/19)
2019 Apr 7, In Pakistan a vehicle tumbled off a mountainous road into a river, killing seven people.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Dozens of neglected animals were evacuated from a ramshackle Gaza zoo in the fourth and largest such rescue mission in the blockaded Palestinian enclave. Vets and volunteers from Four Paws International transported some 40 animals into Israel from the neglected zoo in the southern town of Rafah.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, The lawyer for Vladimir Barsukov, an imprisoned Russian organized crime figure, says the man has been charged in the 1998 assassination of reformist lawmaker Galina Starovoitova. Barsukov has been behind bars since 2007 and is serving sentences for murder, extortion, fraud and money laundering.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Rwandan President Paul Kagame began a week of solemn ceremonies to commemorate the lives of 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus murdered during the Rwandan genocide, a three-month-killing spree that began 25 years ago.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Saudi media reported that four attackers targeted a security checkpoint with guns and explosives in eastern Saudi Arabia as they tried to flee the country, leading to the death of two and the arrest of two others.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Sudanese police fired tear gas at thousands of protesters who rallied outside the army headquarters for a second day urging the military to back them in demanding President Omar al-Bashir resign. Security forces killed at least five protesters over the weekend.
(AFP, 4/7/19)(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Sudan suffered a total power blackout.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Syrian government forces and insurgents exchanged a barrage of rockets in the country's northwest that killed at least 8 people in Idlib province and another 5 after a government-run hospital was hit in Hama province.
(AP, 4/7/19)(SFC, 4/8/19, p.A2)
2019 Apr 7, Ugandan authorities said that Kimberley Sue Endecott (35) and her driver, Jean Paul, had been rescued unharmed after being seized by gunmen in Queen Elizabeth National Park. Undisclosed sources later said that a ransom of $30,000 had been paid.
(AP, 4/8/19)
2019 Apr 7, Yemeni medical officials said a big explosion at a warehouse in Sanaa killed at least seven children in nearby schools.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2020 Apr 7, US Pres. Donald Trump acknowledged that the coronavirus is infecting and killing black people in the US at disproportionately high rates, and said that the authorities were working to provide more information. Trump also threatened to freeze US funding to the World Health Organization, saying the international group had “missed the call" on the coronavirus pandemic.
(NY Times, 4/8/20)(AP, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, The Trump administration granted a license to General Electric Co to supply engines for China's new COMAC C919 passenger jet.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, The US Navy said at least 230 crew members of the USS Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive. Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly resigned over fallout from his ouster of Capt. Brett Crozier.
(AP, 4/8/20)(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A7)
2020 Apr 7, Deaths in the US due to the coronavirus reached about 11,000, with about 370,000 confirmed infections. The number of confirmed infections of the novel coronavirus exceeded 1.34 million globally and the death toll crossed 76,000.
(AP, 4/7/20)(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, A US appeals court handed a win to the Trump administration in its efforts to resume federal executions by tossing a district judge's injunction that blocked four death penalty sentences from being carried out.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, California reported 14,475 cases of the coronavirus and 400 deaths. SF Bay Area confirmed cases numbered 3,880 and 107 deaths.
(sfist.com, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said over 138,000 people in the state have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Cuomo announced the state’s highest one-day total of virus-related deaths: 731. New York City had at least 3,202 deaths. New Jersey and Connecticut also reported one-day highs.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)(NY Times, 4/8/20)(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A5)
2020 Apr 7, Hal Willner, American music producer, died with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 at his home in Manhattan.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Willner)(Econ, 4/18/20, p.74)
2020 Apr 7, John Prine (73), the country-folk singer and songwriter whose lyrics made him a favorite of Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and others, died in Nashville of complications due to the coronavirus.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Prine)(NY Times, 4/8/20)
2020 Apr 7, In Tennessee Idris Abdus-Salaam (33), a truck driver from North Carolina, fatally stabbed three female emplyees at a Pilot travel center before he was killed by a deputy.
(SFC, 4/9/20, p.A3)
2020 Apr 7, A federal appeals court sided with Texas in allowing it to ban most abortions while the state is under an emergency order that limits non-essential surgeries during the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Washington DC reported 114 new cases of the coronavirus bringing its total to 1,211 and 22 deaths.
(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A5)
2020 Apr 7, Wisconsin voters lined up to cast ballots across the state, ignoring a stay-at-home order in the midst of a pandemic to participate in the state's presidential primary election. Voters in the state's Democratic primary endorsed Joe Biden. Voters also elected Democrat Judge Jill Karofsky to the state's Supreme Court.
(AP, 4/7/20)(SFC, 4/15/20, p.A3)
2020 Apr 7, Exxon Mobil Corp throttled back investment in shale, natural gas and deep water production, cutting planned capital spending by 30% this year as the coronavirus pandemic saps energy demand and oil prices tumble.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, World stock markets posted sharp gains as signs of progress in curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus in both Europe and the United States fueled investors' appetite for risk.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Armenia reported 853 confirmed cases of the coronavirus as of today with 87 people having recovered from the infection and eight deaths.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh confirmed its first case of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Bangladesh police arrested Abdul Majed, a former military captain and fugitive in the 1975 killing of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. A trial in 1998 had sentenced a dozen defendents including Majed for the killing of Rahman and most of his family members.
(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A2)
2020 Apr 7, Benin has ordered people in a dozen cities to wear face masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Benmin has 22 confirmed cases.
(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A4)
2020 Apr 7, Glencore, a British multinational trading and mining company, said it would stop operations at its Mopani mine in Zambia due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Econ., 5/2/20, p.35)
2020 Apr 7, Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry said a senior official at the Bulgarian embassy in The Hague has been recalled for illegally collecting what he called a coronavirus tax from visitors seeking consular assistance.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Mainland China reported no coronavirus deaths for the first time since the pandemic began and a drop in new cases.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In China a one-sentence notice issued by the party-government joint disciplinary watchdog body in Beijing’s western district said Ren Zhiqiang, prominent Communist party member, was undergoing a “review and monitoring investigation." Ren dropped from sight in mid-March after publishing an online essay that criticized the leadership’s handling of the virus outbreak that originated in December in central China.
(AP, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Colombia extended a nationwide quarantine due to the coronavirus until April 27.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, An Ecuadoran court found former Pres. Rafael Correa (57) guilty of corruption and sentenced him in absentia to eight years in prison. Correa has been living in his wife's native Belgium since 2017.
(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A2)
2020 Apr 7, It was reported that sales of sex toys in Denmark have more than doubled after Danes were told to stay at home to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, European Union countries adopted new rules for truck drivers' working conditions, despite several countries calling for the reforms to be halted to help support vulnerable transport firms amid the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, The European Commission imposed provisional anti-dumping duties on some stainless steel products from China, Indonesia and Taiwan, nearly eight months after launching a probe into low-price imports.
(Reuters, 4/11/20)
2020 Apr 7, Finland said it will start tracking the spread of the coronavirus in its population with randomized antibody tests.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In France almost 99,000 people across the country have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and nearly 9,000 of them have died.
(ABC News, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In Germany a man (29) in Celle fatally stabbed a teenage refugee (15) from Iraq. The man later claimed to have been under the influence of drugs.
(SFC, 4/27/20, p.A2)
2020 Apr 7, Hong Kong reported 21 new cases of the coronavirus for a total of 936.
(https://tinyurl.com/sdefuk6)
2020 Apr 7, Leaders of Hungary's Roma people said the coronavirus pandemic posed a grave threat to the already precarious status of the marginalized minority, with many Roma feeling abandoned by the nationalist government.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, India said it will allow limited exports of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, that US President Donald Trump has touted as a potential weapon in the fight against the virus.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Iran's parliament convened for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak forced its doors to close, as the country reported a drop in new infections for the seventh straight day. The health ministry reported 133 new coronavirus deaths, saying the overall fatalities had reached 3,872. Another 2,089 infections were recorded nationwide, bringing the total to 62,589.
(AFP, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Israel's domestic security agency said it arrested an Israeli citizen last month alleged to have spied for Iran. The man was indicted today for “serious security-related offenses".
(AP, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe moved to declare a state of emergency in seven prefectures including Tokyo and Osaka, and announced a record economic stimulus package as the country braces for a surge in coronavirus infections.
(Bloomberg, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, The Latvian government said it was extending until May 12 the state of emergency that has allowed it to implement a string of measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus in the Baltic country. Latvia has reported 548 confirmed cases and 2 deaths.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In Libya rockets rained down on Tripoli, the second day of heavy bombardment by eastern-based forces that struck one of the city’s largest hospitals. Libya has confirmed 20 cases of the coronavirus, all in the country’s west except for one in the eastern city of Benghazi.
(AP, 4/8/20)
2020 Apr 7, Mali has recorded 46 positive cases of COVID-19 disease, including one member of the UN peacekeeping force, and five deaths.
(AP, 4/8/20)
2020 Apr 7, Mexico has nearly 2,800 confirmed COVID-19 infections and 141 deaths. A plane arrived in Mexico with 10 tons of gloves and masks from China to help with the coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 4/7/20)(Reuters, 4/10/20)
2020 Apr 7, Morocco has so far reported 1,141 coronavirus cases and 83 deaths. As of today Moroccans who venture outside their homes without wearing face masks risk prison sentences of up to three months and a fine of up to $126 (£102). Since March 19 more than 8,600 people have been arrested and prosecuted for flouting lockdown rule.
(BBC, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In northern Mozambique Islamist militants killed around 52 people in the village of Xitaxi in Muidumbe district. The attack only came to light on April 21.
(BBC, 4/22/20)
2020 Apr 7, Pakistan has recorded 4,004 cases of the coronavirus and 54 deaths. Pakistan's military promised that dozens of doctors who were briefly jailed for protesting a lack of protective equipment will get the equipment they need.
(AP, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, The west African island nation of Sao Tome e Principe confirmed its first case of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A4)
2020 Apr 7, Saudi Arabia has so far reported 2,795 cases and 41 deaths due to the coronavirus, the highest in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Health Minister Tawfiq al-Rabiah said four studies by infectious disease experts indicated the number of cases was likely to reach between 10,000 and 200,000 in coming weeks. King Salman ordered the temporary release from prison of people serving sentences related to unpaid private debts, and ordered the suspension of all rulings related to such cases in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)(AP, 4/8/20)
2020 Apr 7, Singapore's government passed a new law in parliament banning all social gatherings in homes and public spaces to curb the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). The Health Ministry confirmed 106 new cases of coronavirus infections, most of them locally transmitted, taking the city-state's total to 1,481.
(https://tinyurl.com/yd7alwax)Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, South Africa with 1,686 positive cases now had the highest national total. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that at least 10,075 people across Africa have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. So far, 487 people diagnosed with COVID-19 have died.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)(ABC News, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In Spain the pace of coronavirus deaths ticked up for the first time in five days, with 743 people succumbing overnight. Spain moved to tackle a shortfall of farm workers due to the coronavirus crisis by authorizing the temporary hiring of tens of thousands of immigrants or jobless people.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Turkmenistan gathered thousands of citizens for mass exercise events to mark World Health Day, ignoring the global trend for social distancing to fight the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Turkmenistan has yet to register a case of the novel coronavirus.
(AFP, 4/8/20)
2020 Apr 7, The UN patent agency said China was the biggest source of applications for international patents in the world last year, pushing the United States out of the top spot it has held since the global system was set up more than 40 years ago.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In Venezuela to date the coronavirus has claimed only seven confirmed fatalities with at least 144 confirmed cases. A party by offspring of the ruling elite on March 11 on an island in the Los Roques archipelago led to a cluster of infections. On March 20 embattled leader Nicolás Maduro said on state TV that practically everyone at the party is testing positive.
(AP, 4/7/20)(Economist, 4/4/20, p.24)
2020 Apr 7, Yemeni port official Saleh (60) tested positive for COVID-19. A 2nd test on April 10 also came back positive. This was Yemen's first case of the virus. Health officials then scrambled to identify more than 150 people in the southern Hadhramout region who had met and dealt with the man in the two weeks before he was diagnosed.
(Reuters, 4/27/20)
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World Health Day
For Asia History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
924 Apr 7, Berengarius I, Emperor of Italy, was murdered.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1028 Apr 7, Pope Benedict VIII died.
(PTA, 1980, p.288)
1118 Apr 7, Pope Gelasius II excommunicated Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1348 Apr 7, Prague Univ., the 1st in central Europe, was started by Charles IV.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1498 Apr 7, A crowd stormed Savonarola's convent of San Marco in Florence, Italy.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1506 Apr 7, Francis Xavier, saint, Jesuit missionary to India, Malaya, and Japan, was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1521 Apr 7, Inquisitor-general Adrian Boeyens banned Lutheran books.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1521 Apr 7, Ferdinand Magellan landed on Cebu Island, Philippines. Italian chronicler Antonio Pigafetta reported a thriving port with large supplies of rice and gold. In 2003 the island was a booming commercial center with a population of 4 million.
(WSJ, 10/15/03, p.B2A)
1534 Apr 7, Josr de Anchieta, Spanish Jesuit, missionary (Brazilian Tupi Indians), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1613 Apr 7, Gerard Dou, Dutch painter (Night School), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1614 Apr 7, El Greco (b.1541), born in Crete as Domenikos Theotocopoulos, died in Toledo, Spain. His paintings included "The Resurrection" (1597) and “View and Plan of Toledo" (1610-1614).
(WSJ, 6/18/01, p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Greco)
1625 Apr 7, Albrecht von Wallenstein was appointed German supreme commander.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1645 Apr 7, Michael Cardozo became the 1st Jewish lawyer in Brazil.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1652 Apr 7, The Dutch established settlement at Cape Town, South Africa.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1712 Apr 7, There was a slave revolt in New York City. A slave insurrection in New York City was suppressed by the militia and ended with the execution of 21 blacks. [see Jul 4]
(HN, 4/7/97)(HNQ, 6/10/98)
1719 Apr 7, Jean-Baptiste de la Salle (67), French priest, explorer, saint, died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1724 Apr 7, Johann S. Bach's "St. John Passion" premiered in Leipzig.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1763 Apr 7, Domenico Dragonetti, composer, was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1768 Apr 7, Michel Mathieu (78), composer, died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1770 Apr 7, William Wordsworth, English poet laureate, was born. He wrote "The Prelude" and "Lyrical Ballads." In 1998 Kenneth R. Johnston published “The Hidden Wordsworth: Poet, Lover, Rebel, Spy." The biography covered the first 30 years of the poet’s life. In 1896 Emile Legouis also published a biography of the poet’s youth. The poet was responsible for such phrases as: “love of nature," “love of man," and “emotion recollected in tranquility."
(V.D.-H.K.p.230)(WSJ, 6/23/98, p.A18)(SFEC, 8/23/98, BR p.5)(HN, 4/7/99)
1775 Apr 7, Francis C. Lowell was born. He founded the 1st raw cotton-to-cloth textile mill.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1794 Apr 7, In Poland at the battle of Raclawice the revolutionary forces of Tadeusz Kosciusko defeated the imperial armies.
(DrEE, 9/21/96, p.5)
1795 Apr 7, In the National Convention of Revolutionary France put into effect a new calendar system, similar to that of ancient Egypt. The year began with the autumn equinox, and had 360 days divided into twelve months of thirty days. Five extra days were placed at the end of the year. The months were divided into three 10 day groups. The day was divided into 10 new hours, each hour into 100 minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds.
(K.I.-365D, p.42)
1798 Apr 7, Territory of Mississippi was organized.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1803 Apr 7, Francois D. Toussaint L'Ouverture (Louverture), Haitian revolutionary, died in a dungeon at Fort Joux in the French Alps. In 2007 Madison Smartt Bell authored “Toussaint Louverture: A Biography."
(AP, 4/7/03)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_L'Ouverture)(SFC, 1/15/07, p.D7)
1805 Apr 7, Francis Wilkinson Pickens (d.1869), later Confederate governor of South Carolina, was born in South Carolina.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Wilkinson_Pickens)
1805 Apr 7, The Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery resumed their journey to the headwaters of the Missouri River.
(ON, 4/12, p.10)
1805 Apr 7, Beethoven conducted the fist public performance of his Third Symphony, "Eroica." It was completed in 1804 and 1st published in Vienna.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_(Beethoven))(Econ., 11/21/20, p.76)
1818 Apr 7, Gen. Andrew Jackson captured St. Marks, Fla., from the Seminole Indians.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1827 Apr 7, English chemist John Walker invented wooden matches.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1831 Apr 7, Pedro I of Brazil abdicated in favor of his 5-year-old son, Pedro de Alcantara, Pedro II.
(EWH, 4th ed., p.855)
1837 Apr 7, J. Pierpont Morgan (J.P. Morgan, d.1913), American financier, was born in Hartford, Conn. He later owned U.S. Steel and International Harvester. In 1999 Jean Strouse published the biography "Morgan: American Financier."
(WUD, 1994 p.931)(WSJ, 3/30/99, p.A24)(HN, 4/7/99)
1853 Apr 7, Dr. John Snow administered chloroform to Queen Victoria at the birth of her 8th child, Prince Leopold.
(ON, 5/05, p.9)
1858 Apr 7, Anton Diabelli (76), Austrian publisher, composer, died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1859 Apr 7, Walter Camp, father of American football, was born in Connecticut.
(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1860 Apr 7, William Keith Kellogg, the brother of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943), was born. Will later founded the W.K. Kellogg company in Battle Creek, Mich., to market the cornflakes invented by his older brother. [see 1895]
(HN, 4/7/99)(http://www.ivu.org/history/adventists/kellogg.html)(WSJ, 9/29/00, p.W17)
1862 Apr 7, Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee. Gen. Ulysses Grant after the Battle of Shiloh said: “I saw an open field... so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across... in any direction, stepping on dead bodies without a foot touching the ground." More than 9,000 Americans died.
(SFC, 6/19/96, p.E5)(HT, 4/97, p.13)(AP, 4/7/97)
1863 Apr 7, Battle of Charleston, SC. The Federal fleet attack on Fort Sumter failed.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1865 Apr 7, Battle of Farmville, VA.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1888 Apr 7, Start of Sherlock Holmes adventure "Yellow Face."
(MC, 4/7/02)
1890 Apr 7, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, environmentalist (1st Lady of Everglades), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1891 Apr 7, Nebraska introduced an 8 hour work day.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1891 Apr 7, Phineas T. Barnum (88), US circus promoter (B & Bailey), died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1893 Apr 7, Allan W. Dulles, US diplomat, CIA head (1953-61) (Germany's Underground), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1897 Apr 7, Walter Winchell, American newscaster and newspaper columnist, was born in Harlem, NYC.
(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1902 Apr 7, The Texas Fuel Co. was founded. It soon changed its name to the Texas Co. and eventually became Texaco.
(SFC, 10/20/04, p.C6)
1908 Apr 7, Percy Faith, conductor (Summer Place), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1913 Apr 7, The suffragists' marched to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. By the second decade of the 20th century, woman suffrage--women's right to vote--had become an issue of national importance in America. The growth in the numbers of American working women and the valuable contributions women made in war production during World War I further increased the suffragists' support. On August 20, 1919, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote.
(HNPD, 4/7/99)
1914 Apr 7, British House of Commons passed the Irish Home Rule Bill.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1915 Apr 7, Billie Holliday, jazz and blues legend, was born. She sang "God Bless the Child."
(HN, 4/7/99)
1917 Apr 7, De Falla's ballet "El Sombrero de tres Picos," premiered in Madrid.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1920 Apr 7, Ravi Shankar, sitar player, was born in Benares, India.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1922 Apr 7, U.S. Secretary of Interior leased Naval Reserve #3, "Teapot Dome," in Wyoming to Harry F. Sinclair.
(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1923 Apr 7, The Workers Party of America in NYC became an official communist party.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1923 Apr 7, The 1st brain tumor operation under local anesthetic was performed at Beth Israel Hospital in NYC by Dr K. Winfield Ney.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1926 Apr 7, In San Luis Obispo, Ca., lightning sparked a 5-day oil fire killing 2 people. Over 6 million barrels of oil were burned. Final damages were estimated at $15 million.
(SFC, 4/7/09, p.D8)
1926 Apr 7, Mussolini's Irish wife broke his Italian nose.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1927 Apr 7, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was on hand for the first inter-city (DC to Manhattan) transmission by telephone of video imagery. Hoover’s image and voice were transmitted across telephone lines.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1927_in_television)(AH, 4/07, p.14)
1928 Apr 7, James Garner, actor (Rockford Files, Bret Maverick), was born in Norman, Okla.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1928 Apr 7, Alan J. Pakula, director (All the President's Men, Klute), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1931 Apr 7, Donald Barthelme (d.1989), US writer, was born in Philadelphia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barthelme)(WSJ, 2/21/09, p.W8)
1931 Apr 7, Daniel Ellsberg, anti-war activist and the man who released the Pentagon Papers, was born.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1932 Apr 7, Erv A. Kelley, US policeman, was shot to death by Pretty Boy Floyd.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1933 Apr 7, “Near beer" (3.2 beer) became legal after FDR signed an amendment to the Volstead Act, which had made drinking alcohol a federal crime. Prohibition ended when Utah became the 38th state to ratify 21st Amendment. [see Dec 5]
(SFC, 4/7/96, p.B-11)(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1933 Apr 7, The 1st two Nazi anti-Jewish laws barred Jews from legal and public service.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1933 Apr 7, Jan Erik/Eric Jan Hanussen, Berlin astrologer, illusionist, was murdered.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1934 Apr 7, In India, Mahatma Gandhi suspended his campaign of civil disobedience.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1938 Apr 7, [Edmund G] Jerry Brown Jr, (Gov-D-Cal, Mayor of Oakland), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1939 Apr 7, Francis Ford Coppola, director (Godfather, Apocalypse Now), was born in Detroit.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1939 Apr 7, Italy invaded Albania, which offered only token resistance. Less than a week later, Italy annexed Albania. [see Apr 8]
(AP, 4/7/99)
1942 Apr 7, There was a heavy German assault on Malta.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 7, The NFL adopted its free substitution rule.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 7, US Marine Lt. James Swett (1920-2009), division leader of Squadron 221, shot down 7 Japanese bombers over the Solomon Islands. He was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on this day.
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.B3)
1943 Apr 7, British and American armies link up between Wadi Akarit and El Guettar in North Africa, forming a solid line against the German army.
(HN, 4/7/99)
1943 Apr 7, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 7, Lt. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was seriously wounded during allied air raid.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1945 Apr 7, During World War II, American planes intercepted a Japanese fleet that was headed for Okinawa on a suicide mission. The Japanese battleship Yamato, the world's largest battleship, was sunk during the battle for Okinawa along with 4 Japanese destroyers.
(AP, 4/7/97)(HN, 4/7/99)(MC, 4/7/02)
1947 Apr 7, Auto pioneer Henry Ford (b.1863) died in Dearborn, Mich. Most of his personal estate, valued at $205 million, was left to the Ford Foundation. In 2001 Neil Baldwin authored "Henry Ford and the Jews - The Mass Production of Hate." In 2003 Douglas Brinkley authored "Wheels for the World - Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress." In 2005 Steven Watts authored “The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century."
(AP, 4/7/97)(HN, 2/20/98)(SFC, 6/13/03, p.B4)(SSFC, 8/28/05, p.C2)
1947 Apr 7, Arab students, influenced by national socialist movements in Europe, founded the Baath Party. Satia al-Husri, father of Ba’athism, was a disciple of German philosopher Johann Fichte. This became a holiday in Iraq until abolished in 2003.
(WSJ, 4/3/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/8/03, p.D4)(AP, 7/13/03)
1947 Apr 7, At Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, Friedrich A. von Hayek invited a group of classical liberals to discuss the threat of freedom posed by the expansionist governments of the day. The group founded the Mont Pelerin Society to continue meetings and discussions in the future. They viewed central planning as the single most important threat to liberty.
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A22)(www.montpelerin.org/montpelerin/mpsAbout.html)
1948 Apr 7, The World Health Organization (WHO) was founded by the UN. In 1948, the First World Health Assembly called for the creation of a "World Health Day" to mark the founding of the World Health Organization. Since 1950, World Health Day has been celebrated on the 7th of April annually.
(AP, 4/7/97)(www.who.int/world-health-day/previous/en/index.html)
1949 Apr 7, The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "South Pacific" opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theater for 1928 performances.
(AP, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1951 Apr 7, Janis Ian, [Janis Eddy Fink], lesbian, folk rocker, was born in NYC.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1953 Apr 7, The U.N. General Assembly elected Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961) as Secretary-General of the UN.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(AP, 4/7/97)
1954 Apr 7, Jackie Chan, martial art actor (Rumble in the Bronx), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1954 Apr 7, Pres. Eisenhower spoke at a press conference about why we needed to protect Vietnam and mentioned his fear of a "domino-effect" in Indochina.
(www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=2630)
1954 Apr 7, The West German government refused to recognize DDR (East Germany).
(MC, 4/7/02)
1955 Apr 7, Theda Bara (Theodosia Goodman), silent screen sex symbol, died. Her films included "A Fool There Was" and "Kathleen Mavoureen."
(HNPD, 7/24/98)(WUD, 1994 p.118)
1957 Apr 7, The last of New York City's electric trolleys completed its final run from the city's borough of Queens to Manhattan.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1958 Apr 7, Anti-nuclear peace protesters arrived at the Atomic Weapons Establishment near Aldermaston, England, after marching for several days from London.
(AP, 4/7/08)
1959 Apr 7, Oklahoma ended prohibition after 51 years.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1961 Apr 7, Tad Szulc (d.2001) wrote a front page NY Times article on anti-Castro forces training to fight at Florida bases and predicted a probable invasion on April 18. The invasion took place Apr 17.
(SFC, 5/24/01, p.C4)
1961 Apr 7, Marian Jordan (62), radio comedienne (Fibber McGee and Molly), died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1963 Apr 7, Yugoslavia proclaimed itself a Socialist republic.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1964 Apr 7, IBM introduced its innovative System/360, the company's first line of compatible mainframe computers that gave customers the option of upgrading from lower-cost models to more powerful, expensive ones.
(AP, 4/7/04)
1966 Apr 7, The United States recovered a hydrogen bomb it had lost off the coast of Spain.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1967 Apr 7, A, Israeli-Syrian minor border incident escalated into a full-scale aerial battle over the Golan Heights, resulting in the loss of six Syrian MiG-21s to Israeli Air Force (IAF) Dassault Mirage IIIs, and the latter's flight over Damascus.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War)
1969 Apr 7, The US Supreme Court in Stanley v. Georgia unanimously struck down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
(AP, 4/7/07)
1970 Apr 7, "Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-moon Marigolds," premiered in NYC. The play was written in 1964 by Paul Zindel, playwright and science teacher. Zindel received the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Effect_of_Gamma_Rays_on_Man-in-the-Moon_Marigolds)
1970 Apr 7, In the 42nd Academy Awards in Los Angeles "Midnight Cowboy" won for best picture, John Wayne for best actor (True Grit) and Maggie Smith for best actress (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42nd_Academy_Awards)
1971 Apr 7, President Nixon pledged a withdrawal of 100,000 more men from Vietnam by December.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1971 Apr 7, Pres. Nixon ordered Lt. Calley, imprisoned for the Mi Lai massacre, free.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1971 Apr 7, Miro Baresic (b.1950), a declared pro-Ustasha who strived for Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia, and his friend Andelko Brajkovic shot Ambassador Vladimir Rolovic inside the Yugoslav embassy in Stockholm. A group of Croatian far-right radicals hijacked a Scandinavian Airlines passenger plane in 1972, forcing his release. He found refuge in Paraguay, but was eventually captured again and extradited to Sweden in 1980, where his life sentence was converted to 18 years. He returned to Croatia in 1991 where he was killed in fighting against Serb-led forces fighting against Croatia's independence.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miro_Bare%C5%A1i%C4%87)(AP, 8/1/16)
1972 Apr 7, Richard McCoy (1942-1974), Vietnam veteran and pilot, hijacked a United Air Lines jet and extorted $500,000 in copycat version of the DB Cooper crime. He parachuted into a Utah desert, but was caught with the money in his house and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He escaped and died in a shootout with FBI agent Nicholas O’Hara in Nov, 1974.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, Z1 p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_McCoy,_Jr.)
1972 Apr 7, "Crazy" Joe Gallo, flamboyant mobster, was gunned down at his 43rd birthday party in Manhattan’s Umberto's Clam House.
(SFC, 12/30/04, p.A2)
1972 Apr 7, Sheik Abeid Amane Karume, Zanzibari vice-president of the republic of Tanzania, was assassinated.
(Econ, 12/13/03, p.43)(www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3404703463.html)
1976 Apr 7, Robert A. Swanson (d.1999 at 52), a venture capitalist, and Herb Boyer, a UCSF molecular biologist and co-discoverer of gene-splicing in 1973, incorporated Genentech Inc. They planned to use gene splicing to create a genre of medicines.
(SFC, 5/28/96, p.B1)(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A10)(SSFC, 4/1/01, p.B1)
1976 Apr 7, China's leadership deposed Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping and appointed Hua Kuo-feng (Guofeng) prime minister and first deputy chairman of the Communist Party.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1977 Apr 7, Pres. Carter stopped the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel rods in order to discourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A18)
1977 Apr 7, The RAF gunned down Siegfried Bubeck, a West German federal prosecutor, his driver, Wolfgang Goebel, and the guard Georg Wurster. In 2009 police, using new DNA evidence, arrested Verena Becker (57), a former German leftist terrorist on suspicion of involvement in the slayings. Becker had been arrested a month after the ambush, following a shootout with police. Prosecutors at the time did not have enough evidence to try her on charges of involvement in the Buback slaying, but convicted her of armed robbery and attempted murder stemming from the shootout. She was sentenced to life in prison. In 1989 she was pardoned of those charges by German Pres. Richard von Weizsaecker and released from prison. In 2010 Becker was charged with 3 counts of murder for her alleged role in the fatal 1977 ambush.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A8)(AP, 8/28/09)(AP, 4/21/10)
1978 Apr 7, President Carter announced he was deferring development of the neutron bomb, a high-radiation weapon.
(AP, 4/7/08)
1978 Apr 7, A Gutenberg bible sold for a record $2.2 million in NYC. It was bought by Martin Breslauer for the state museum of Baden Wurttemberg.
(www.biblio.com/details.php?dcx=35363264&aid=frg)
1980 Apr 7, The US broke relations with Iran during the hostage crises. Pres. Carter ordered all Iranian diplomats expelled from the US and prohibited any further exports to the nation. Pres. Carter signed Executive Order 12205 for economic sanctions against Iran.
(HN, 4/7/97)(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=33235)
1982 Apr 7, In the SF Bay Area an AC Transit bus clipped a stalled car and then struck a double-tanker truck that jack-knifed and erupted in the Caldecott Tunnel. The resulting fireball left 7 people dead.
(SFC, 11/2/13, p.D1)
1982 Apr 7, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh (b.1936), Iran’s minister of foreign affairs, was arrested. He was convicted of plotting against the government and executed on Sep 15.
(www.cedmagic.com/home/ced-digest/ced-digest-vol-07/ced-digest0714.html)
1983 Apr 7, Specialist Story Musgrave and Don Peterson took the first US space walk in almost a decade as they worked in the open cargo bay of Challenger for nearly four hours.
(HN, 4/7/97)(AP, 4/7/03)
1984 Apr 7, Frank Church (b.1924), Sen-D-Idaho, (1957-81), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church)
1986 Apr 7, The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) became US law. It was created by California Congressman Pete Stark (1931-2020) and allowed workers to continue receiving health coverage for a period of time after they left a job. The statute had passed Congress in 1985.
(http://tinyurl.com/nu9f2ly)(SFC, 1/25/20, p.C1)
1986 Apr 7, Dimitris Angelopoulos (79), a Greek industrialist, was killed by Nov. 17 militants. In 2003 Patroklos Tselentis testified that he drove the getaway motorcycle.
(AP, 3/26/03)(http://tinyurl.com/yzu4sj)
1987 Apr 7, Chicago Mayor Harold Washington handily won a second term, quashing a challenge by archrival Edward Vrdolyak.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1987 Apr 7, Frances Newton (22) allegedly killed her husband and 2 children in Houston to gain insurance benefits. According to a reprieve petition, Adrian Newton was a drug user and drug seller and there was evidence that some sort of trouble in this regard was brewing before the murder. In 2005 she was executed in Huntsville, Texas, the 1st black woman to be executed by the state since the Civil War.
(SFC, 9/15/05, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/9mw34)
1987 Apr 7, Ali Mecili, a lawyer active in Algeria's human rights movement, was killed by three gunshots in the foyer of his Paris apartment. Colleagues accused the Algerian government of involvement. In 2008 Algerian diplomat Mohamed Ziane Hasseni was arrested at an airport in the French port city of Marseille, based on an international arrest warrant. A Paris judge had signed the orders for the arrest of Hassani and the suspected killer, Abdelmalek Amellouet, in December last year.
(AP, 10/17/08)(http://tinyurl.com/67pryj)
1988 Apr 7, Albie Sachs (b.1935) was working in Mozambique on legal guarantees that would be part of the new South African Constitution when a car bomb exploded that left him without a right arm.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, Z1 p.7)(www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8732.html)
1988 Apr 7, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Afghan leader Najibullah met in the Soviet Central Asian city of Tashkent. They later issued a joint statement announcing an end to the civil war in Afghanistan and withdrawal Soviet troops.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1989 Apr 7, A week after the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster, President Bush pledged federal assistance to help in the clean-up.
(AP, 4/7/99)
1989 Apr 7, A Soviet nuclear-powered submarine, the Komsomolets, caught fire and sank in the Norwegian Sea, claiming 42 of 69 lives.
(AP, 4/7/99)(SFC, 8/14/00, p.A13)
1990 Apr 7, A display of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs opened at Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center, the same day the center and its director were indicted on obscenity charges. Both were later acquitted.
(AP, 4/7/00)
1990 Apr 7, Former national security adviser John M. Poindexter was convicted of five counts at his Iran-Contra trial. However, a federal appeals court later reversed the convictions.
(HN, 4/7/97)(AP, 4/7/00)
1990 Apr 7, In Burma (later Myanmar) a double-decker ferry sank in Gyaing River during a storm and 215 people were believed drowned.
(www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0005329.html)
1990 Apr 7, An arson fire aboard a ferry enroute from Norway to Denmark killed 159 people.
(AP, 4/7/00)(AP, 1/14/12)
1991 Apr 7, US military planes began airdropping supplies to Kurdish refugees who were facing starvation and exposure in the snow-covered mountains of northern Iraq. The United States warned Iraq not to interfere with the relief effort.
(AP, 4/7/01)
1991 Apr 7, In Puerto Rico 3 prisoners escaped from the Rio Piedras State Penitentiary in a hijacked helicopter with the help of accomplices. Two were recaptured, while a third remained at large.
(AP, 12/31/02)
1992 Apr 7, Democrat Bill Clinton swept the New York, Kansas and Wisconsin primaries.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1992 Apr 7, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat survived the crash landing of his plane in the Libyan desert; three crew members were killed.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1992 Apr 7, The Sacramento Bee, The New York Times and Newsday won two Pulitzer prizes each; playwright Robert Schenkkan was honored for "The Kentucky Cycle," novelist Jane Smiley for "A Thousand Acres."
(AP, 4/7/97)
1993 Apr 7, European warplanes began arriving in Italy, prepared to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1994 Apr 7, Angelus Gottfried "Golo" Mann (85), German-US historian, died.
(www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/MannGolo/)
1994 Apr 7, Civil war erupted in Rwanda, a day after a mysterious plane crash claimed the lives of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. Former Defense Minister Colonel Theoneste Bagosora reportedly instigated the killing spree by Hutu militia. Within twenty-four hours fighting resulted in the deaths of Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the prime minister of Rwanda, Joseph Kavaruganda, the president of the Supreme Court and hundreds of others. In the months that followed, hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and Hutu intellectuals were slaughtered. In Kibeho thousands of Tutsis gathered in a church where they were bombed, shot or hacked to death by Hutu soldiers and militiamen.
(AP, 4/7/99)(SFC, 4/8/99, p.C3)(SSFC, 4/7/02, p.A19)(MC, 4/7/02)
1994 Apr 7, UN officer Colonel Luc Marchal ordered troops to escort Rwandan prime minister Agathe Uwilingyimana to a radio station in Kigali. The party was ambushed, the troops hacked to death, and the prime minister was raped and murdered. Augustin Ndindiliyimana, head of the Gendarmerie Nationale, was later charged in the killing of 10 Belgian peacekeepers charged with guarding Uwilingyimana and for his role in the Tutsi extermination. Ndindiliyimana was arrested in Belgium in 2000.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A16)
1994 Apr 7, In Rwanda Augustin Bizimungu made a speech, several days before he was made army chief, in the northern district of Mukingo, calling for the killing of Tutsis. Bizimungu was arrested in Angola in 2002. In 2011 he received a 30-year jail term for his role in the mass killing of Tutsis.
(AP, 5/17/11)
1994 Apr 7, Pope John Paul II made remarks at the conclusion of a concert in commemoration of the Shoah (holocaust), in which he acknowledged the Nazi Holocaust killing of Jews.
(http://tinyurl.com/c9vt8)
1995 Apr 7, President Clinton threatened to veto a lengthy list of bills passed by the Republican-controlled House if they were not modified in the Senate.
(AP, 4/7/00)
1995 Apr 7, In a prime-time television address, House Speaker Newt Gingrich declared the GOP "Contract with America" was only a beginning.
(AP, 4/7/00)
1996 Apr 7, Monica Lewinsky informed pres. Clinton that she was to be transferred from the White House. He promised to bring her back following the elections and they had another sexual encounter.
(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A13)
1996 Apr 7, Celebrating Easter Mass under a glorious spring sky, Pope John Paul II appealed for support for the "artisans" of peace in Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the Holy Land.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1997 Apr 7, The Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to Steven Millhauser for "Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer," but no award was given for drama. The Times-Picayune of New Orleans won two journalism Pulitzers, including the public service prize, for a series examining how overfishing and pollution are devastating the oceans.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1997 Apr 7, In Columbia prisoners took over a 1,200 inmate facility in Bucaramanga, the 3rd prison to be seized in a week.
(WSJ, 4/8/97, p.A1)
1997 Apr 7, In Zaire deserting government soldiers of the 21st Brigade donned white scarves and declared themselves on the side of the rebels as the rebels approached Lubumbashi, the capital of the copper and cobalt rich Shaba province.
(SFC, 4/8/97, p.A8)
1998 Apr 7, President Clinton held a town meeting in Kansas City, Mo., on the future of Social Security.
(AP, 4/7/99)
1998 Apr 7, Mary Bono, the widow of entertainer-turned-politician Sonny Bono, won a special election to serve out the remainder of her husband's congressional term.
(AP, 4/7/99)
1998 Apr 7, Indonesia and the IMF agreed on a new plan for the economy. Pres. Suharto and the fund made concessions, that included continuing subsidies on food and fuel and closing more insolvent banks.
(SFC, 4/8/98, p.A12)
1999 Apr 7, In Kentucky 2 volunteer firefighters, Kenneth Nickell (28) and Kevin Smith (30), were killed while battling a blaze at the Daniel Boone National Forest.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A13)
1999 Apr 7, The US State Dept. made public a list of Serb commanders whose names were to be sent to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A10)
1999 Apr 7, Chechen gunmen killed 4 Russian policemen patrolling the border near Stavropol.
(WSJ, 4/8/99, p.A1)
1999 Apr 7, Spyros Kyprianou, the acting president of Cyprus, planned to fly to Belgrade to negotiate the release of the 3 American soldiers held by Serbia.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A1)
1999 Apr 7, In Macedonia the government evacuated a huge refugee encampment overnight and sent them to locations in Albania, Greece and Turkey.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A1)
1999 Apr 7, Heavy NATO bombing reportedly killed 10 civilians in Pristina, Kosovo. The Provincial Executive Council Building, which housed the offices of Zoran Andjelkovic, Kosovo's top Serbian official, were was hit by bombs.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.AQ10)
1999 Apr 7, Yugoslav forces sealed the Morini border with Albania and the border at Macedonia and told refugees to return home. The wave of refugees approached the half-million mark.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A1)(SFC, 4/20/99, p.A7)(AP, 4/7/00)
2000 Apr 7, Pres. Clinton signed a bill to allow people aged 65-70 to earn as much as they can without losing Social Security benefits.
(SFC, 4/8/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 7, Attorney General Janet Reno met in Washington with the father of Elian Gonzalez; Reno later told reporters that officials would arrange for Juan Miguel Gonzalez to reclaim his son, but she gave Elian’s Miami relatives one more chance to drop their resistance and join in a peaceful transfer.
(AP, 4/7/01)
2000 Apr 7, A Miami jury ruled that cigarettes caused the diseases of 3 smokers chosen as representatives in a class-action suit. Compensatory damages totaled 12.7 million and opened the door to huge punitive damages.
(SFC, 4/8/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 7, Iqbal Masih, a slain child labor spokesperson, was named in Sweden as the first winner of the World’s Children’s prize. Masih was gunned down at age 13 after speaking out against child labor in carpet factories where he had worked from age 5-10. Prize money was earmarked to establish the Iqbal Masih Freedom Center for the Rights of the Child in Pakistan.
(SFC, 4/8/00, p.C1)
2001 Apr 7, In Cincinnati Timothy Thomas (19), an unarmed black man wanted on 14 misdemeanor warrants, was fatally shot by a white police officer. The shooting led to city-wide riots. Officer Stephen Roach was later charged with negligent homicide and obstructing official business.
(SFC, 4/11/01, p.A10)(SFC, 5/8/01, p.A3)(AP, 4/7/02)
2001 Apr 7, The $297 million Mars Odyssey was launched on a six-month, 286-million-mile journey to the Red Planet and was expected to arrive near Mars Oct 24. A 2-year orbit to map the planet’s chemistry and minerals was planned.
(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A2)(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.A13)(AP, 4/7/02)
2001 Apr 7, Actress Beatrice Straight died in Los Angeles at age 86.
(AP, 4/7/02)
2001 Apr 7, China rejected US statements of regret and continued to demand an apology for the April 1 collision between a US spy plane and Chinese jet.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.C1)
2001 Apr 7, In Tehran 40-42 people were arrested including members of the opposition Freedom Movement. The Revolutionary Court said some were linked to the Iraq-based Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK).
(SFC, 4/9/01, p.A8)
2001 Apr 7, The weeklong Jewish Passover began at sundown.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.C3)
2001 Apr 7, In the Philippines Manila went dark for 14 hours when a transmission line overloaded and cut power to 35 million people.
(WSJ, 4/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Apr 7, In Vietnam a Russian-made M-17 helicopter carrying a team searching for American MIAs crashed and all aboard were reported killed. Rescuers recovered the bodies of 9 Vietnamese and 7 Americans the next day.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.C2)(SFC, 4/9/01, p.A7)
2002 Apr 7, Pres. Bush ended weekend talks with Britain’s PM Tony Blair in Texas. Blair said he would back a US military action against Iraq.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A9)
2002 Apr 7, Arthur Andersen announced it would lay off more than a quarter of its US workforce, a direct result of Enron filing for bankruptcy in the fall of 2001.
(AP, 4/8/03)
2002 Apr 7, Actor John Agar (81) died in Burbank, California.
(AP, 4/7/03)
2002 Apr 7, In Colombia 2 bombs killed 12 people in Villavicencio and FARC rebels were suspected. One bomb was used to attract people when the 2nd was detonated.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A9)
2002 Apr 7, In Costa Rica Abel Pacheco (68), psychiatrist, poet and former TV commentator, was elected president in a runoff against Rolando Araya.
(WSJ, 4/8/02, p.A1)
2002 Apr 7, In Iraq Saddam Hussein pledged to defeat the US if attacked and promised to continue supplying Palestinians to defend against Israel.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A9)
2002 Apr 7, Israeli forces continued Operation Defensive Shield and news reporters were kept away. 12 Palestinians were killed in Nablus with stiff resistance in the Jenin refugee camp. Worldwide protests included a march in Morocco by a half million people and in Brussels by some 10,000.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A1,8)(AP, 4/7/03)
2003 Apr 7, Syracuse beat Kansas 81-78 in the NCAA Basketball finals.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Apr 7, The US Supreme Court voted 6-3 to uphold a 50-year-old Virginia law making it a crime to burn a cross as an act of intimidation.
(AP, 4/7/04)
2003 Apr 7, Pulitzer Prize winners included the Boston Globe for public service, Jeffrey Eugenides for fiction (Middlesex); Rick Atkinson for history ((An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa (1942-1943); and Samantha Power for general nonfiction (A Problem from Hell: American and the Age of Genocide"). The Boston Globe won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for public service for its coverage of the priest sex abuse scandal.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A2)(AP, 4/7/08)
2003 Apr 7, Jewelry valued at $4.5 million was stolen from the Lang Estate and Jewelry store on Union Square in SF. 2 men were later arrested. In 2006 Troy Smith (44) was convicted in the robbery and faced 35 years to life in prison. His brother Dino Smith (48) and George Turner (46) were convicted in 2005. The robbers entered on a Sunday night and forced employees to open the safes the next morning and escaped with 1,300 pieces of jewelry.
(SFC, 12/21/04, p.B3)(SFC, 11/1/06, p.B7)(SFC, 10/1/09, p.E3)
2003 Apr 7, In the 19th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom US forces in tanks and armored vehicles stormed into the center of Baghdad, seizing Saddam Hussein's Sijood and Republican palaces. As many as 5 marines were killed. Many Iraqis died in constant suicidal attacks. It was later speculated that the US and the Baath regime arranged a secret deal (safqua) to hand over Baghdad.
(AP, 4/7/03)(SFC, 4/7/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/8/03, p.A1)(SSFC, 4/20/03, p.D3)
2003 Apr 7, A US warplane dropped 4 precision-guided 2,000-pound JDAMs and left a smoking crater 60 feet deep in the upscale al-Mansour section of western Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein was believed to have been in a meeting with top officials.
(AP, 4/8/03)(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Apr 7, Capt. Harry Alexander Hornbuckle on the road to Baghdad led 80 US soldiers against 300 Iraqi and Syrian fighters. 200 enemy were killed with no US casualties.
(WSJ, 11/11/03, p.A1)
2003 Apr 7, The SF Chronicle ran a $45,000 full-page ad that called for the impeachment of Pres. Bush. Former US Attorney Gen’l. Ramsey Clark led the ad sponsors.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A12)
2003 Apr 7, Juan Emeterio Rivas, Colombia radio journalist for station Calor Estereo, was shot and killed by gunmen after he told his police body guards to take time off. Rivas' body and that of an engineering student were discovered in a rural area outside Barrancabermeja. Julio Cesar Ardila, the mayor of Barrancabermeja, was later charged with ordering the murder. He was among three men convicted in the murder of Jose Emeterio Rivas. In 2009 Ardila was sentenced to 28 years in prison for ordering the murder.
(AP, 4/7/03)(AP, 7/12/03)(AP, 1/22/09)
2003 Apr 7, Cuba handed down sentences of 15-27 years to the 1st 7 of 80 recently rounded dissidents. Activists of Oswaldo Paya’s Christian Liberation Movement made up more than two-thirds of those arrested. In response the EU imposed diplomatic sanctions and Cuban officials boycotted embassy functions in what came to be called the “cocktail war." The sanctions were suspended in 2005 and lifted in 2008.
(AP, 4/8/03)(Econ, 12/17/05, p.38)(Econ, 6/28/08, p.44)
2003 Apr 7, Cecile de Brunhoff (99), the inspiration for Babar the elephant whose adventures captivated generations of children, died in Paris. She first invented the tale of a little elephant as a bedtime story for her boys in 1931. They in turn told their father, painter Jean de Brunhoff, who illustrated the story and filled in details.
(AP, 4/8/03)
2003 Apr 7, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man who approached the fence of a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip overnight. In Tulkarem, Israeli troops arrested Maslama Thabet, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.
(AP, 4/7/03)
2003 Apr 7, Mexico said it would prepay $3.84 billion in the last outstanding Brady par bonds. They originally totaled $34 billion.
(WSJ, 4/9/03, p.A10)
2003 Apr 7, In the northern Siberian republic of Yakutia a fire engulfed an old wooden school, killing 21 students and a teacher.
(AP, 4/7/03)
2004 Apr 7, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) issued its latest "Pig Book," an exposition of "improper of unnecessary" US federal expenditures.
(SSFC, 4/4/04, Par p.24)
2004 Apr 7, The US government issued the 1st license for a manned suborbital rocket to Scaled Composites of Mojave headed by Burt Rutan.
(SFC, 4/8/04, p.A2)
2004 Apr 7, In Brazil Amazon Indians attacked prospectors who were illegally digging for diamonds. Cinta Larga Indians massacred 29 illegal wildcat diamond miners on their remote northern reservation. 28 Indians were charged in the killings, but the case has stalled over jurisdictional questions.
(AP, 4/14/04)(AP, 12/10/07)
2004 Apr 7, In Germany a court in Hamburg released Mounir el-Motassadeq (30), the only man convicted so far of involvement in the Sep 11, 2001, attacks.
(WSJ, 4/8/04, p.A1)
2004 Apr 7, A U.S.-led multinational force trying to bring stability to Haiti helped detain Wilford Ferdinand, a top rebel figure.
(AP, 4/9/04)
2004 Apr 7, In India a land mine killed at least 26 policemen in the eastern state of Jharkhand. Communist guerrillas, calling for a boycott of India's national elections, were suspected.
(AP, 4/8/04)
2004 Apr 7, U.S. Marines in a fierce battle for this Sunni Muslim stronghold fired rockets that hit a mosque compound filled with worshippers, and witnesses said as many as 40 people were killed. Shiite-inspired violence spread to nearly all of the country.
(AP, 4/7/04)
2004 Apr 7, Militiamen loyal to al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, clashed with Polish troops in Karbala, and Muntadhir al-Mussawi, an aide to the cleric, was killed.
(AP, 4/7/04)
2004 Apr 7, In Iraq 2 German counter-terrorism GSG-9 security agents were ambushed and went missing while on a routine trip from Jordan to Baghdad.
(AP, 4/10/04)
2004 Apr 7, In Malaysia 3 men armed with firebombs, machetes and an ax attacked Myanmar's embassy, hacking one senior official and starting a fire that destroyed the building.
(AP, 4/7/04)
2004 Apr 7, A Moscow court sentenced Russian arms control researcher Igor Sutyagin, a military analyst with the USA and Canada Institute, a respected Moscow-based think-tank, to 15 years on charges of passing information on nuclear submarines and other weapons to a British company that Russia claimed was a CIA cover. Sutyagin insisted on his innocence, saying the information he provided was available from open sources. In 2010 he was released as part of a spy swap with the US.
(AP, 4/7/04)(AP, 7/9/10)
2005 Apr 7, Pres. Bush met with Premier Berlusconi and Pres. Ciampi one day after viewing the pope’s body at the Vatican.
(SFC, 4/7/05, p.A13)
2005 Apr 7, In Delaware police arrested Allison L. Norman (22) after he killed 2 people and wounded 4 others during a rampage.
(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A3)
2005 Apr 7, Montana voted to ban smoking in all public places. Gov. Brian Schweitzer said he would sign the legislation.
(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A3)
2005 Apr 7, Pfizer Inc. agreed to suspend sales and marketing of its arthritis drug Bextra at the request of US and EU drug regulators, who said the risks outweigh the drug's benefits.
(AP, 4/7/05)(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A1)
2005 Apr 7, California state prosecutors charged Julie Lee, a top volunteer fund-raiser for former Sec. of State Kevin Shelley, with grand theft and other felonies. In 2008 Lee (62) was found guilty on 5 of 7 charges relating to Shelley’s 2002 campaign, All the charges related to a $500,000 grant for a SF Sunset District community center that was never built. In state court Lee pleaded guilty to 9 counts.
(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A1)(SFC, 7/12/08, p.A1)(SFC, 7/17/08, p.B1)
2005 Apr 7, Riza Malaj (34), Albania's most wanted man, blew himself up about this time while fishing with dynamite. He lost both hands, badly hurt his eyes and suffered serious wounds all over his body while trying to catch trout.
(AP, 4/11/05)
2005 Apr 7, Australia’s PM John Howard and Malaysia’s Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced plans to negotiate a free trade agreement but refused to concede ground on key differences regarding Canberra's role in the region.
(AP, 4/7/05)
2005 Apr 7, A bomb blast rocked a Cairo bazaar popular with foreigners. An American tourist died the next day from wounds sustained in a bomb blast raising the death toll to three. Hassan Rafaat Ahmed Bashandi (17-18), was carrying almost 7 pounds of TNT in a leather bag filled with nails when it exploded prematurely.
(AP, 4/8/05)(AP, 4/11/05)
2005 Apr 7, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, was named Iraq's interim prime minister; Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was sworn in as interim president.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2005 Apr 7, The Irish Republican Army said it will consider an appeal by Sinn Fein party chief Gerry Adams to renounce violence, a long-elusive goal in Northern Ireland peacemaking.
(AP, 4/7/05)
2005 Apr 7, Mexico City's leftist mayor formally declared his intention to run for president next year even as Congress was to decide whether he should face criminal charges for allegedly disobeying a court order in a land-use case.
(AP, 4/8/05)
2005 Apr 7, Passengers on historic bus trips between the Pakistani and Indian portions of Kashmir crossed a bridge spanning the de facto border, voyages both sides hope will lead to lasting peace on the subcontinent. Kashmiris walked across the “Peace Bridge," on the Line of Control between India and Pakistan.
(AP, 4/7/05)(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A3)
2005 Apr 7, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe defied a European Union travel ban and arrived in Rome to join world leaders attending Pope John Paul II's funeral. Italy has a pact with the Vatican in which it does not interfere with people transiting the country to see the pope.
(AP, 4/7/05)
2006 Apr 7, The US Court of International Law ruled that US Customs violated a provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in applying a law known as the Byrd amendment to antidumping and countervailing duties on goods from Canada and Mexico.
(Reuters, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, Republican leaders called on Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., to step down from his ranking post on the House ethics committee because of allegations that he provided legislative earmarks benefiting companies and individuals who helped make him a millionaire.
(SFC, 4/8/06, p.A4)
2006 Apr 7, Dena Schlosser, charged with murder for cutting off her baby daughter Margaret's arms in what her lawyers portrayed as a religious frenzy, was found not guilty by reason of insanity by a judge in McKinney, Texas.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2006 Apr 7, In Tennessee 10 people were killed as tornadoes hit the area for the 2nd time in a week.
(AP, 4/8/06)
2006 Apr 7, It was reported that scientists at MIT had harnessed a replicating virus, that binds to gold and cobalt oxide, to create a nanotechnology battery.
(WSJ, 4/7/06, p.B2)
2006 Apr 7, In southern Algeria gunmen attacked a convoy of customs agents traveling through the desert, killing 13 and wounding eight others.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, Australian PM John Howard moved to ease Indonesian outrage over a decision to grant visas to asylum-seekers from Papua, saying his government would review the process.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, In Austria a 2-day meeting began in Vienna for European Imams aimed at creating a distinct identity for European Muslims.
(SFC, 4/7/06, p.A16)
2006 Apr 7, A British judge ruled that author Dan Brown did not steal ideas for "The Da Vinci Code" from a nonfiction work.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2006 Apr 7, Britain’s BAE Systems announced plans to sell its stake in aircraft maker Airbus to its French-German partner EADS.
(AFP, 4/8/06)
2006 Apr 7, In Chile an appeals court upheld the indictment of former dictator Gen. Pinochet on charges of evading up to $3 million in taxes related to secret accounts in foreign banks.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, The EU said it has cut off direct aid payments to the Hamas-led Palestinian government because of its refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, A bus skidded off a narrow mountain road and plunged into a river in a remote region of Indian Kashmir and dozens were feared dead.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, A toned-down edition of Playboy magazine went on sale in Indonesia, defying threats of protests by Islamic hardliners in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, At least 2 suicide attackers, one wearing a woman's cloaks, blew themselves up at the Buratha Shiite mosque in northern Baghdad, killing some 79-90 people and wounding scores. One US service member died of wounds suffered while on patrol in western Baghdad.
(AP, 4/7/06)(AP, 4/8/06)(Econ, 4/22/06, p.48)
2006 Apr 7, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian man during an overnight arrest raid in the West Bank city of Nablus.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, Israeli missiles slammed into a car in Gaza City, killing two members of a Palestinian rocket squad in the 2nd deadly airstrike since the Islamic militant group Hamas assumed power last week. An Israeli airstrike killed six Palestinian militants and wounded five at a militant training camp in central Gaza.
(AP, 4/8/06)(SFC, 4/8/06, p.A7)
2006 Apr 7, Japan’s health and welfare ministry said the nation’s population shrank in the year through November 2005, the first annual decrease on record, confirming an earlier government prediction.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, In Nepal police fired tear gas and fought frenzied street battles with protesters on the second day of a strike called by government adversaries of King Gyanendra. Protesters said 150 people were arrested.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, It was reported that some AIDS patients in South Africa were choosing cash disability grants over advanced AIDS drugs in order to sustain their families.
(WSJ, 4/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Apr 7, In Turkey a suicide bomber blew herself up injuring 2 people, including a suspected accomplice. Turkish forces killed 6 Kurdish rebels in Sirnak.
(WSJ, 4/8/06, p.A1)(AP, 4/8/06)
2006 Apr 7, The UN appealed for $426 million to help victims of drought in Horn of Africa, where more than 40 percent of people are undernourished and thousands have died because of complications due to hunger.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, Venezuela Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez said that five suspects were being charged with willful homicide in the slayings of the 3 Faddoul brothers, whose bodies were found April 4. Supporters of President Hugo Chavez pelted the car of the US ambassador with eggs and tomatoes, then chased after his convoy on motorcycles.
(AP, 4/7/06)(AP, 4/8/06)
2007 Apr 7, The New York Times reported in its Sunday edition that the Bush administration in January allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from North Korea in an apparent violation of a UN Security Council sanctions resolution passed months earlier over its nuclear test.
(Reuters, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Thousands of people marched through downtown Los Angeles, demanding a way for the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to become citizens and condemning President Bush's latest proposal.
(AP, 4/8/07)
2007 Apr 7, It was reported that Ray Irani, Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s chairman and chief executive, took in more than $400 million in compensation in 2006, one of the biggest single-year payouts in US corporate history.
(Reuters, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, The sport salmon fishing season opened in California.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A1)
2007 Apr 7, In Oregon 15 libraries in Jackson were due to close following the loss of $7 million in federal funding.
(SSFC, 3/4/07, p.A1)
2007 Apr 7, It was reported that injections of Mycobacterium vaccae into mice caused their immune systems to produce serotonin. This neurotransmitter, when low in humans, was known to be related to depression.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.79)
2007 Apr 7, Johnny Hart (76), creator of the B.C. comic strip (1958), died at his home in Endicott, NY. He and Brant Parker created the “Wizard of Id" strip.
(SFC, 4/9/07, p.B3)
2007 Apr 7, Actor Barry Nelson (b.1917) died in Bucks County, Pa. He was the first actor to portray Ian Fleming's secret agent James Bond in a 1954 TV adoption of Casino Royale.
(SFC, 4/16/07, p.B8)(AP, 4/7/08)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Nelson)
2007 Apr 7, In southwestern Afghanistan suspected Taliban militants ambushed Afghan workers of an American de-mining company, leaving seven people dead and four wounded. Officials said more than 1,000 NATO and Afghan troops clashed with Taliban and took over control of Sangin, a district center in southern Afghanistan long held by the militants.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Suspected Islamist militants opened fire on a military patrol in northwestern Algeria, starting a gunbattle that left nine soldiers and six attackers dead.
(AP, 4/8/07)
2007 Apr 7, In Brazil Martin Strel, a 52-year-old Slovenian, completed a 3,272 swim down the Amazon River that could set a world record for distance. In 2000, he completed a 1,866-mile swim along the Danube. He broke that record two years later after swimming 2,360 miles down the Mississippi. In 2004 he broke it again by swimming 2,487 miles along the Yangtze river in China.
(AP, 4/8/07)
2007 Apr 7, In India a jeep carrying a gelatin-based explosive used for a highway construction project exploded in a southern village, killing 16 people and injuring 22 more.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, US warplanes attacked suspected militiamen wielding shoulder-fired rockets in the second day of fierce fighting against Shiite gunmen south of Baghdad. At least one civilian was killed and five were seriously wounded when an American tank fired on their house in Diwaniyah. Iraqi troops killed Abu Baraa al-Libi, a Libyan al-Qaida figure, in a raid on his Baghdad hideout just before the man could detonate an explosives belt he was wearing. US forces also killed one suspect and captured 8 others in raids in Baghdad and south of Ramadi. A roadside bomb exploded next to a joint American-Iraqi army patrol on a highway leading into Annah, 175 miles northwest of Baghdad. Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and two were wounded. Police in Fallujah reported finding four bodies in the center of the city. Four American soldiers were killed in an explosion near their vehicle in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad. Duaa Khalil Aswad (17), a member of the insular Yazidi religious sect, was stoned to death for loving a Sunni Muslim boy [see April 22].
(AP, 4/7/07)(AP, 4/8/07)(SFC, 5/22/07, p.A8)
2007 Apr 7, An Israeli helicopter launched an airstrike along the Gaza Strip's border with Israel, killing a Palestinian militant and wounding two others.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, The 17-year insurgency in Kashmir continued with an average of 3 lives lost every day. India had an estimated 600,000 soldiers and paramilitary police stationed in Jammu & Kashmir state.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.14)
2007 Apr 7, Emergency officials said 247 dead seals have washed up on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan in the past week.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Libya’s foreign-exchange reserves were estimated at $56 billion. The population was reported to be about 5.6 million.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.46)
2007 Apr 7, Malaysian ministers issued fresh attacks on bloggers, threatening to take away their rights and accusing them of trying to overthrow the government, according to reports.
(AFP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, In northern Pakistan some 40 people were killed and more than 70 injured in 2 days of sectarian clashes between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Kurram.
(AFP, 4/7/07)(Econ, 4/14/07, p.43)
2007 Apr 7, In the southern Philippines 9 soldiers and a civilian were killed in a clash in a small army camp in Jolo island’s Parang town.
(AP, 4/8/07)
2007 Apr 7, A Russian rocket carrying the American billionaire who helped develop Microsoft Word roared into the night skies over Kazakhstan, sending Charles Simonyi and two cosmonauts soaring into orbit on a two-day journey to the international space station.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, A roadside bomb tore through a civilian bus in northern Sri Lanka, killing seven people and wounding 26. The army blamed Tamil Tiger rebels for the attack.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Thousands of supporters of Ukrainian PM Viktor Yanukovych rallied for a fifth day in the streets of Kiev, calling for stability amid a political crisis over the president's dissolution of parliament.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Yemeni police arrested three men suspected of setting fire to a mosque and wounding at least 33 people.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2008 Apr 7, The Washington Post won 6 Pulitzer Prizes, the most in its history. Junot Diaz won the fiction award for “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." Tracy Letts won the drama award for “August: Osage County." Bob Dylan won a special citation for his life’s work.
(SFC, 4/8/08, p.A8)
2008 Apr 7, In North Carolina Thomas Wright, a former state lawmaker, was convicted of mishandling charitable contributions and fraudulently obtaining a loan. He was sentenced to 6-8 years in prison.
(WSJ, 4/8/08, p.A2)
2008 Apr 7, In Ohio 9 mortgage lenders agreed to modify adjustable-rate mortgages for borrowers facing foreclosure. In Pennsylvania mortgage companies and consumer advocates opened talks to help cash-strapped homeowners avoid foreclosure. Last week Maryland’s Gov. signed a measure creating a 150-day moratorium on foreclosures.
(WSJ, 4/8/08, p.A4)
2008 Apr 7, Samuel (b.1913) Frankel, Detroit area developer and philanthropist, died. In the 1960s Frankel collaborated with Harry Cunningham to create the discount-store concept, building the first Kmart store. In 1969, he developed Somerset Mall. In 2005 he and his wife Jean provided a $20 million endowment to establish the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.
(www.lsa.umich.edu/judaic/html/history_goals_3_2.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/5srvs6)
2008 Apr 7, In southern Afghanistan, militants attacked a police convoy in Uruzgan province, and the ensuing clash left 13 insurgents dead and five wounded. In the western province of Herat, Taliban militants attacked a checkpoint in Shindand district, killing two police officers and wounding another.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 7, In Australia 5 teenage boys armed with machetes and baseball bats invaded a Sydney high school, smashing classrooms and injuring 18 students and a teacher.
(AFP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, In London a coroner's jury decided that Diana and Dodi Fayed were unlawfully killed due to reckless speed and drinking by their driver, and by the reckless pursuit of vehicles chasing them, not as part of a murder conspiracy.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 7, In London Oleg Gordievsky, a double agent who became the most senior Soviet spy to defect to the West during the Cold War, said that he became sick after taking the pills at his home in southern England on Oct. 31.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, In Bulgaria gunmen killed Georgy Stoyev, the country’s best-known author of books on the mafia. The night before, Borislav Georgiev, the chief executive of a large energy company, was killed in his apartment building with two bullets to the head.
(http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iOiGGOjL2rCkZuEhCa9kkLtaA5LA)
2008 Apr 7, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said Zhang Rongkun, a Shanghai tycoon, has been sentenced to 19 years in prison in a pension funds scandal that toppled the city's communist party chief.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, China and New Zealand signed a free-trade agreement effective October 1.
(www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-04/07/content_6596491.htm)(WSJ, 4/8/08, p.A14)
2008 Apr 7, A Chinese fishing boat capsized after colliding with a South Korean cargo ship off South Korea's southernmost island, leaving six Chinese sailors missing.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition force, called on Egyptians to boycott local council elections due on Tuesday in protest at the disqualification of most of its candidates.
(Reuters, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, The EU opened the way for air travelers to use mobile phones to talk, text or send e-mails on planes throughout Europe's airspace.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Security officials extinguished the Olympic torch three times as protests against China's human rights record turned a relay through Paris into a chaotic series of stops and starts. France's former sports minister, Jean-Francois Lamour, said that though the torch had been put out, the Olympic flame itself still burned in the lantern where it is kept overnight and on airplane flights.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, In Haiti protesters angered by high food prices flooded the streets of Port-au-Prince, forcing businesses and schools to close as unrest spread from the countryside. Witnesses said at least one person was killed by hotel security guards during a protest in the southern city of Les Cayes.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 7, Iraq’s prime minister issued his strongest warning yet to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to disband his Mahdi Army militia or face political isolation. The Sadrists said a move to ban them from elections would be unconstitutional. Hospital officials said nine more people were killed, including five children and two women, and dozens wounded as gunbattles continued. That pushed the two-day death toll to at least 25.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas resumed face-to-face negotiations, trying to push forward peace efforts after nearly two months marred by heavy Gaza Strip violence and new Israeli plans to expand settlements.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Italian police arrested 38 suspects in a sweep against a clan of the 'ndrangheta organized crime syndicate accused of murder, extortion and arms and drug trafficking.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Kosovo’s leaders signed the country’s new Constitution.
(SFC, 4/8/08, p.A3)
2008 Apr 7, In Morocco 9 Islamists serving long sentences for the deadly 2003 Casablanca bombings escaped from Kenitra prison, north of Rabat. In January, 2009, Hicham Alami one of the escapees who had been sentenced to life, was captured in Algeria and returned to Morocco.
(AFP, 4/7/08)(AP, 1/9/09)
2008 Apr 7, Nepal was rocked by two bombings, the latest violence to hit campaigning for this week's vote on the country's political future following a peace deal with Maoist rebels.
(AFP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Spanish officials said 2 people in Spain have died of the human variant of mad cow disease, in the first such fatalities since 2005. The two new victims apparently contracted the disease prior to 2001 and health controls on livestock and meat production are much tighter now than they were then. Spain has reported more than 700 cases of mad cow disease since it was first detected in this country in 2000.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Switzerland's Novartis AG said it will spend about $39 billion in a two-step bid for a majority stake in U.S. eye-care company Alcon.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, It was reported that Thailand’s market bubble in religious talismans had popped leaving many small business people in debt. The market in Jatukam Ramathep amulets had swelled to $1.5 billion in 2007.
(WSJ, 4/7/08, p.A1)
2008 Apr 7, In Yemen 7 people were arrested on suspicion of involvement in attacks the previous day against a residential complex for Westerners in San’a, Yemen's capital.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 7, Zimbabwe authorities released Barry Bearak, a NY Times journalist, along with an unidentified British citizen. They had been accused of reporting without official accreditation.
(WSJ, 4/8/08, p.A10)
2009 Apr 7, US military leaders said the Pentagon has spent over $100 million in the past 6 months responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks and other computer network problems.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.C3)
2009 Apr 7, In Alabama authorities found the body of Kevin Lee Garner (45) near his burned home in Priceville. The home had burned overnight. Garner's body was found following a day of searching for him in several north Alabama counties following the murders of four of his family members in the Greenhill community of Lauderdale County.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090408/ap_on_re_us/alabama_four_dead)(SFC, 4/8/09, p.A5)
2009 Apr 7, In southern California a gunman in Temecula opened fire at a Korean Christian retreat center, leaving one woman dead and four people injured.
(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 7, A lawsuit filed in US District Court in Denver by the SEC alleged that Shawn Merriman, an unlicensed broker, collected up to $20 million from investors in several states to support a lavish lifestyle. The former bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints allegedly operated a Ponzi scheme from his suburban Denver home for about 15 years, bilking investors out of millions of dollars to collect religious art and classic cars.
(AP, 4/9/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Texas Jon Dale Jones (46), a former Army hospital nurse, pleaded guilty to assault and theft. He was accused of infecting 15 patients with hepatitis C. Jones was arrested on federal charges in March of 2008 for using dirty needles to administer anesthesia, and accused of stealing painkillers for himself.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.A5)(www.mahalo.com/Jon_Dale_Jones)
2009 Apr 7, Vermont became the first state to legalize same sex marriage through a legislature’s vote.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.A5)
2009 Apr 7, GM and Segway announced that they are working together to develop a two-wheeled, two-seat electric vehicle designed to be a fast, safe, inexpensive and clean alternative to traditional cars and trucks for cities across the world. The project was called P.U.M.A. (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility).
(AP, 4/7/09)(WSJ, 4/8/09, p.B4)
2009 Apr 7, Samuel Beer, Harvard professor (1946-1982), died. His books included “British Politics in the Collectivist Age" (1965), which established him as the foremost scholar on modern British politics.
(Econ, 5/2/09, p.88)
2009 Apr 7, Jack Wrangler (b.1946 as John Robert Stillman), porn star and musical theater producer, died in Manhattan. He appeared in over 30 gay sex films and 20 straight films including “The Devil in Miss Jones" (1982).
(SFC, 4/10/09, p.B5)
2009 Apr 7, Australia announced plans to build a 30 billion US dollar broadband network, its biggest infrastructure project ever, opting to retain government control rather than contract out the deal.
(AFP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, Cuba’s President Raul Castro met with six visiting members of the Congressional Black Caucus for more than four hours, his first face-to-face discussions with US leaders since he became president last year. A "very healthy, very energetic" Fidel Castro asked visiting Congressional Black Caucus members what Cuba could do to help President Barack Obama improve bilateral relations during his first meeting with US officials since falling ill in 2006.
(AP, 4/7/09)(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 7, Ethiopia, the world's sixth largest coffee producer, said it did not intend to nationalize the coffee sector after revoking licenses of six exporters for hoarding the beans. PM Meles Zenawi had warned the exporters against hoarding coffee, accusing them of speculation in the world markets.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, A man opened fire at a courthouse in Bavaria, killing his sister-in-law and injuring two other people. He then shot himself dead. The incident appeared to stem from a long-running inheritance dispute.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, President Barack Obama flew into Iraq from Turkey on a trip shrouded in secrecy, for a brief look at a war he opposed as a candidate and now vows to end as commander in chief. A car bomb in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad killed at least nine people and wounded 18 others. A suicide car bomb killed three people at a police checkpoint in Fallujah. In Iskandariyah police found the bullet-riddled body a member of the Awakening Council, a group of former Sunni insurgents who sided with the US in the fight against al-Qaida in Iraq. The councilman was kidnapped a day earlier. A car bombing in Kazimiyah killed nine people, including a mother who was riding in a taxi with her infant son.
(AP, 4/7/09)(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 7, Israeli police fatally shot a Palestinian motorist as he tried to run over officers guarding the demolition of the home of a militant who killed three Israelis with a construction vehicle in July.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Moldova anti-communist protesters stormed the Parliament, hurling computers through shattered windows and setting fire to furniture in a violent demonstration against what they said were fraudulent elections. 3 people were left dead and hundreds were detained.
(AP, 4/7/09)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.46)
2009 Apr 7, In southern Pakistan police arrested five men alleged to be planning suicide attacks on the city of Karachi.
(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 7, Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori (70) was found guilty of murder and kidnapping for death squad activities during his 10-year rule during the 1990s. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. His daughter, Congresswoman Keiko Fujimori (33), said people's outrage over the "vengeful" verdict will propel her to Peru's presidency in 2011. Then she'll pardon him.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, Saudi authorities beheaded 3 Pakistanis convicted of killing a fellow Pakistani during a jewelry heist. This brought to 20 the number of beheadings in the kingdom this year.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In South Korea former Pres. Roh Moo-hyun announced that his wife had received money from Park Yeon-cha, chairman of Taekwang Industrial Co., a shoe manufacturer, several hours following the arrest of Chung Sangmoon, a former aide who had accepted the money for the president’s wife.
for the president’s wife.
(WSJ, 4/8/09, p.A8)
2009 Apr 7, In Thailand protesters surrounded the prime minister's car and smashed a window as he rode in it, escalating tensions a day before a massive anti-government rally that the leader said has sparked concerns of civil war.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Turkey Pres. Obama wrapped up his first European trip as president with a request of the world: Look past his nation's stereotypes and flaws. "You will find a partner and a supporter and a friend in the United States of America."
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, UNESCO awarded the World Press Freedom Prize to Lasantha Wickrematunge, a murdered Sri Lankan journalist, whose self-written obituary accused the government of silencing him. His self-written obituary was published three days after his murder in early January, in which no arrests have been made.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Venezuela legislators loyal to President Hugo Chavez approved a new law that erodes the authority of Caracas' opposition Mayor Antonio Ledezma by subordinating him to a government-appointed official.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2010 Apr 7, An Emeryville, Ca., drug analysis laboratory was raided as part of 3-year DEA investigation dubbed “Operation Lude Behavior." 3 men at the lab were among 22 charged in a nationwide Quaalude trafficking ring.
(SFC, 4/9/10, p.C5)
2010 Apr 7, Afghan and foreign troops killed several insurgents during an operation to capture a senior Taliban commander suspected of providing materials used in making roadside bombs. 2 insurgents were captured during the operation in Helmand province's Kajaki Sofla.
(AP, 4/9/10)
2010 Apr 7, Bangladesh deployed the army to guard water pumps in the capital Dhaka after acute shortages triggered widespread protests.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Brazil rains kept pummeling Rio de Janeiro as officials scrambled to restore transit after at least 96 people were killed by landslides and floods.
(Reuters, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, China and India signed an agreement to set up a hot line linking their top leaders.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, Innovation for the Development and Protection of the Environment (IDPE) said that from March 3-28 Congo government troops killed 7 hippos and 5 elephants as well as five antelopes, four baboons, three chimpanzees and two buffalo in Virunga national Park, a UNESCO world heritage. The soldiers "use their wives and cousins to sell the meat" in villages near the park, the IDPE said in a report that included photos of decomposing elephant carcasses.
(AFP, 4/8/10)
2010 Apr 7, Auto giants Renault, Nissan and Daimler launched a partnership to save billions of euros and accelerate sales of low-pollution electric cars.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Indonesia a magnitude 7.7 earthquake shook Indonesia's northwest island of Sumatra, triggering a small tsunami, snapping power lines and sending panicked residents rushing for higher ground.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Iraq spokesman Salah al-Obeidi announced that a survey of supporters of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr voted 24% for him to support Shiite politician Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who was interim prime minister from 2005 to 2006. Iraq's incumbent PM Nouri al-Maliki and his chief rival Ayad Allawi received only 10% and 9% of votes respectively. In northern Iraq 2 American soldiers died in combat while conducting a patrol.
(AP, 4/7/10)(AP, 4/8/10)
2010 Apr 7, Israel’s police said 6 Israelis have been detained on suspicion of running an international organ trafficking ring and breaking promises to donors to pay for their removed kidneys.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Kyrgyzstan anti-government unrest rocked Bishkek as thousands of protesters stormed the main government building, set fire to the prosecutor's office and looted state TV headquarters. At least 83 people were killed and some 1500 injured in clashes nationwide.
(AP, 4/7/10)(AP, 4/8/10)(Econ, 4/17/10, p.46)
2010 Apr 7, In Mexico police in the border state of Nuevo Leon found the bodies of a police chief and two police officers who had been kidnapped a day earlier. In the central state of Morelos, gunmen attacked the offices of federal prosecutors in the city of Cuernavaca, killing a guard. A bystander was killed during a shootout between gunmen and federal police in the town of Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas state, on the Guatemalan border.
(AP, 4/8/10)
2010 Apr 7, In northwestern Pakistan militants attached a bomb to a tanker carrying fuel to NATO forces in Afghanistan, destroying the vehicle and killing a boy who was riding in a van behind it.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, Somali pirates off the coast of Kenya hijacked the MV Yasin C, a Turkish vessel with 25 crew onboard, the day after a hostage drowned during a separate encounter between naval forces and a pirated vessel. The crew locked themselves in the engine room and realized that the pirates had left the ship on April 9.
(AP, 4/7/10)(AP, 4/10/10)
2010 Apr 7, South Africa's governing party said it has asked all its wings to stop singing controversial songs including one with lyrics that encourage people to shoot white farmers which some blame for the slaying of a white supremacist leader.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Spain Baltasar Garzon (54), the judge who became an international hero by going after Augusto Pinochet and Osama bin Laden, was indicted for having dared to investigate what is arguably Spain's own biggest unresolved case: atrocities committed during and after its ruinous Civil War.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Switzerland the Solar Impulse aircraft, a pioneering Swiss bid to fly around the world on solar energy, successfully completed its first test flight.
(AFP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, Thai PM Abhisit Vejjajiva declared a state of emergency in Bangkok, handing the army broad powers to restore order after anti-government protesters broke into Parliament, forcing some lawmakers to flee by helicopter.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2011 Apr 7, US House Republicans pushed a plan that would hold off for another week the threat of a government shutdown while Congress and the Obama administration struggle to reach a budget deal. Democrats pressing for a longer-term solution rejected the short-term approach as a political maneuver meant to blame them if the government closes its doors on April 9.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, In California an Asian citrus psyllid, which can carry a disease killing trees, was discovered in Ventura County. The county was put under quarantine for the tiny aphid-like pest.
(SFC, 4/11/11, p.A4)
2011 Apr 7, Six Afghan security personnel were killed as Taliban gunmen detonated a bomb hidden in an ambulance at a police centre near the key southern city of Kandahar. 3 insurgents were also killed. Demonstrations against the burning of a copy of the Koran by an American pastor entered a seventh day when several hundred people gathered for a peaceful protest outside a Kabul mosque. A roadside bomb killed a coalition service member in the south.
(AP, 4/7/11)(AP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 7, In Brazil a gunman opened fire in an elementary school in Rio de Janeiro. 12 children were killed including 10 girls and 2 boys between the ages of 12 and 15. Wellington Oliveira (23) shot and killed himself after being confronted by police.
(AP, 4/7/11)(AP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 7, In India Anna Hazare, a 73-year-old Gandhi devotee who has promised to fast until death unless the government toughens its anti-corruption laws, piled pressure on the graft-tainted administration. Hazare began his hunger strike in New Delhi on April 5. On April 9 the government conceded to Hazare’s demands and his hunger strike ended.
(AFP, 4/7/11)(Econ, 4/16/11, p.45)
2011 Apr 7, Israeli tanks quickly retaliated after an anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip struck a school bus in southern Israel, wounding two people, including one child. The critically injured boy (16) died of his wounds on April 17. The missile attack came hours after Israel carried out a series of airstrikes against tunnels it says are used by militants to smuggle weapons under the Egyptian border and carry out attacks. The tank fire killed a 50-year-old man and wounded 7 other people.
(AP, 4/7/11)(SFC, 4/18/11, p.A2)
2011 Apr 7, Forces allied with Ivory Coast's internationally recognized president Alassane Ouattara have stormed the gates of Laurent Gbagbo's home. French forces wearing night vision goggles rappelled from a helicopter to rescue the Japanese ambassador and 7 others, as strongman leader Laurent Gbagbo remained in an underground bunker amid the fighting.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, Japan was rattled by a strong 7.1 magnitude aftershock and tsunami warning nearly a month after a devastating earthquake and tsunami flattened the northeastern coast. At least 4 people died in the aftershock, the worst since the March 11 9.0 quake.
(AP, 4/7/11)(AFP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 7, In Jordan Mohammed Abdul-Karim (45) set himself on fire outside the prime minister’s office and was in critical condition with 3rd degree burns to his face and body. On April 20 a forensics official said Abdul-Karim has died of his wounds.
(SFC, 4/8/11, p.A2)(AP, 4/20/11)
2011 Apr 7, Kosovo’s parliament elected Atifete Jahjaga (35) as its first woman president.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atifete_Jahjaga)
2011 Apr 7, A NATO air strike killed at least five rebels near the Libyan port of Brega. Insurgents reported that Muammar Gaddafi's forces killed five more in a bombardment of besieged Misrata. NATO blamed forces loyal to Gaddafi for a fire in the Sarir oilfield, and denied the Western military alliance had launched air strikes in the area.
(Reuters, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, Mexican security forces reported that a series of eight burial pits have been found in Tamaulipas state, one of which contained 43 bodies and the others 16 corpses. The find was made near the ranch where drug cartel gunmen less than a year ago massacred 72 migrants who were trying to reach the United States. 14 suspects linked to the killing were under arrest.
(AP, 4/7/11)(SFC, 4/8/11, p.A6)
2011 Apr 7, Pakistani troops came under fire in the Pazai area of the Mohmand agency. Troops killed 10 militants and called for air support that left over 44 more dead.
(SFC, 4/9/11, p.A2)
2011 Apr 7, In Peru 2 protesters were fatally shot and a dozen others injured in a clash between police and peasants opposing a planned copper mine on the southern coast.
(SFC, 4/8/11, p.A2)
2011 Apr 7, In the Philippines Scott McMahon of Seattle was detained on charges of rape after he reportedly filed a case against her for allegedly traumatizing his young son. On August 2, 2016, McMahon was freed following his acquittal.
(AP, 8/2/16)
2011 Apr 7, Amnesty International urged Serbian authorities to "take urgent and immediate action" to halt forced evictions of Roma, also known as Gypsies, from their settlements in the capital Belgrade and prevent "systematic discrimination" against them.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, In South Korea a mathematics student (19) at a prestigious engineering college jumped to his death from a high-rise apartment one day after meeting the school psychiatrist. He was distressed over low grades. Three other students have killed themselves since January at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
(AP, 4/15/11)
2011 Apr 7, Spain said around 30 former Cuban political prisoners and 200 relatives will be brought to Madrid, the largest group yet to arrive since the two countries agreed to the transfers.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, Northern Sudanese Armed Forces have deployed two Mi-24 helicopter gunships and at least nine T-55 tanks about 60 miles (100 km) from Abyei's border according to the US-based Satellite Sentinel Project.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, Syria’s Pres. Bashar Assad granted citizenship to thousands of Kurds living in a northeastern province. Kurds, the largest ethnic minority in Syria, made up 15 percent of the country's 23 million population and have long complained of neglect and discrimination. Assad also sacked Governor Mohammad Iyad Ghaza of central Homs province, the scene of clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces in the past three weeks.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, Thailand authorities seized 1,800 Bengal monitor lizards being smuggled on pickup trucks to the capital. Their meat could sell for $7.50-$15 per pound ($16-$33 per kg) in China, making them worth more than $60,000.
(AP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 7, UAR blogger and a human rights activist Ahmed Mansour said authorities have launched an "unprecedented campaign of outrages insults and threats" against him since he signed a petition calling for political reform.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, A blackout hit a large swath of Venezuela, darkening street lights, shutting down the Caracas subway and prompting the government to announce temporary rationing measures. A forest fire apparently caused the problem by overheating major transmission lines in western Venezuela and knocking them offline.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, The Yemeni opposition welcomed an offer by Arab Gulf states to mediate between the president and opposition protesters who have demanded Ail Abdullah Saleh step down after 32 years in power.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 7, A Zimbabwe court ordered militant supporters of President Mugabe to stop exhuming hundreds of skeletons they say were the victims of colonial-era massacres, a project that critics say is stoking racial hatred in Zimbabwe.
(AP, 4/8/11)
2012 Apr 7, In the SF Bay Area the town of Hercules, population 24,000, was reported to have recently sold a pair of 4-story, half-finished apartment buildings for 425,000. The city had already sunk 38 million into the project, which it could not sustain.
(SFC, 4/7/12, p.A1)
2012 Apr 7, In Afghanistan 3 employees of an Afghan construction company died when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb.
(AP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, Britain's Home Office interior ministry said it was investigating reports that hacking group Anonymous had attacked its website over the government's plans to boost Internet surveillance.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, Greek protesters marching in memory of a man who killed himself over financial woes that he blamed on the government attacked a policeman in Athens, leaving him bloodied and stealing his bulletproof vest.
(AP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, Indian gold jewelers halted a three-week nationwide strike after the government promised to consider their demands to scrap new duties on the multi-billion-dollar market.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, An online video showed Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, Saddam Hussein's vice president and the highest-ranking member of his regime still on the run, in what appears to be his first video message since 2003.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, In Pakistan at least 135 people were buried when the wall of snow engulfed a military complex on the northern tip of the divided Kashmir region.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, Gaza's Hamas rulers executed three men in dawn hangings. All three were charged with murder and charges against one included spying for Israel.
(AP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, In Malawi Joyce Banda was sworn as the new president, the nation's first female leader. She called for reconciliation after the divisive Bingu wa Mutharika died in office.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, Myanmar's Pres. Thein Sein held his first meeting with Karen rebels, as the government intensifies efforts to bolster peace with the country's oldest insurgent group.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, In Nigeria 22 people were killed and 31 others were injured in Benue state when their St Robert's Catholic Church caved in on them during Easter vigil in Adamgbe.
(AFP, 4/8/12)
2012 Apr 7, In Syria some 86 civilians were killed as regime forces pressed a protest crackdown three days ahead of a deadline to cease fire and pull back. 16 rebels and 17 members of the security forces were also killed nationwide. The head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation said at least one million Syrians affected by violence need urgent humanitarian aid worth $70 million. Thousands of demonstrators turned out in Damascus to show their backing for President al-Assad's ruling Baath party on the 65th anniversary of its creation.
(AFP, 4/7/12)(AFP, 4/8/12)
2012 Apr 7, Several Tunisian centrist parties including the center-left PDP agreed to combine forces and gain more clout in a country increasingly challenged by Islamists ahead of general elections. A military appeals court in Tunis upheld the convictions of Tunisia's ousted president and his top officials for torturing army officers over an alleged 1991 coup plot. Baton-wielding police fired teargas to disperse a demonstration by thousands of jobless Tunisian graduates in the capital Tunis.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 7, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez flew back to Cuba late today for another round of radiation therapy.
(AP, 4/8/12)
2012 Apr 7, Yemen's airport in Sanaa was shut down after forces loyal to a sacked general close to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh surrounded it and threatened to shoot down planes. A government air raid late today killed 16 terrorists belonging to Al-Qaeda network in Kud near Zinjibar. A US drone reportedly killed eight Al-Qaeda suspects when it fired a missile at their vehicle in the eastern province of Shabwa.
(AFP, 4/7/12)(AFP, 4/8/12)
2013 Apr 7, In California it was made public that a federal magistrate has ruled that federal authorities broke the law when they leased land to oil drillers without studying the possible risks of hydraulic fracturing.
(SFC, 4/9/13, p.A1)
2013 Apr 7, Britain pledged $102 million to Sudan over three years, with about half going to Darfur.
(AP, 4/8/13)
2013 Apr 7, In Halifax, Canada, Rehtaeh Parsons (17) died after being removed from life support following a suicide attempt by hanging on April 4. She had killed herself after a photo of her allegedly being sexually assaulted in Nov, 2011, circulated online. In August one man (18) was charged with two counts of distributing child pornography and the second man (18) was charged with making child pornography and distributing it.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Rehtaeh_Parsons)(AP, 8/9/13)
2013 Apr 7, China warned against "troublemaking" on its doorstep, in an apparent rebuke to North Korea, and the US said it was postponing a missile test to help calm high tension on the divided Korean peninsula.
(Reuters, 4/7/13)
2013 Apr 7, In Egypt clashes clashes broke out following the funeral of four Christians killed in sectarian violence a day earlier. Two more people were killed and another 89 injured outside Cairo's main Coptic cathedral.
(AP, 4/8/13)
2013 Apr 7, Egyptian train drivers and conductors announced they were on strike to press demands for better pay. A 10% raise was rejected by the train drivers and conductors as too little.
(AP, 4/7/13)
2013 Apr 7, In France Wilfred De Bruijn was beaten unconscious near his home in central Paris, sustaining five fractures in his head and face, abrasions and a lost tooth. His boyfriend, who was also beaten up, said he witnessed three to four men shouting "Hey, look they're gays," before they attacked. A photo of the victim went viral on social media.
(AP, 4/10/13)
2013 Apr 7, In Iraq 3 bombs exploded in Mosul killing 4 security officers and wounding 7 other people.
(SFC, 4/8/13, p.A2)
2013 Apr 7, Israeli researchers and Jewish leaders reported a 30 percent jump in anti-Semitic violence and vandalism last year, topped by a deadly school shooting in France, and expressed alarm about the rise of far-right parties in Hungary, Greece and other countries.
(AP, 4/7/13)
2013 Apr 7, Montenegro held elections.
(AP, 4/20/13)
2013 Apr 7, Pakistan's former military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf was given approval to run for parliament next month, a victory for him in what has otherwise been a bumpy return to the country after more than four years in self-imposed exile.
(AP, 4/7/13)
2013 Apr 7, Missionary Jerry Krause (54) disappeared near Sao Tome island as he flew in a twin-engine Beechcraft 1900C from South Africa to Mali.
(AP, 4/17/13)
2013 Apr 7, Syrian government airstrikes killed at least 20 people as the army pressed ahead with its campaign to crush the rebellion against Pres. Bashar Assad. In Daraa a man was shot dead by an army sniper.
(AP, 4/7/13)
2013 Apr 7, Ukraine’s Pres. Viktor Yanukovych pardoned former Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko and former environment minister Heorhiy Filipchuk.
(SFC, 4/8/13, p.A2)
2014 Apr 7, The US approved a bill barring Iranian diplomat Hamid Abutalebi from entering the country. Officials objected to his selection as Iran’s new UN ambassador because of his alleged participation in a Muslim student group that held 52 Americans hostage in the 1979 seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran.
(AP, 4/9/14)
2014 Apr 7, Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce.com, and his wife Lynne announced a 2nd $100 million donation to the UCSF and Children’s Hospital of Oakland, which formed an alliance in January for research and medical care.
(SFC, 4/8/14, p.A1)
2014 Apr 7, Researchers at Codenomicon, a security outfit, revealed the Heartbleed bug, a software flaw that made up to two-thirds of the world’s websites vulnerable to hackers.
(Econ, 4/12/14, p.65)
2014 Apr 7, In Washington state the death toll from the March 22 mudslide rose to 33 with 12 people still missing. As of April 17 all 39 recovered victims were identified and 4 remained missing.
(SFC, 4/8/14, p.A6)(SFC, 4/18/14, p.A7)
2014 Apr 7, Preliminary tallies from Afghanistan's presidential election showed former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah leading in parts of Kabul but, with ballot counting likely to last weeks. Preliminary results were not due until April 24.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, In southern Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed at least 15 people traveling in vehicles that had been diverted from a main road after an earlier attack in Kandahar province.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Peaches Geldof (25), the daughter of Irish musician and Band Aid founder Bob Geldof and TV presenter Paula Yates, was pronounced dead by paramedics at her home in Wrotham, southeast of London. On July 23 a coroner ruled that she was a heroin addict and died of a drug overdose.
(AP, 4/8/14)(AFP, 7/23/14)
2014 Apr 7, Quebec voters gave a resounding no to the prospect of holding a third referendum on independence from Canada, handing the main separatist party in the French-speaking province one of its worst electoral defeats ever. Liberals got 41.5 percent of the vote and took 70 seats in the 125-member National Assembly.
(AP, 4/8/14)
2014 Apr 7, In China the Xiahaizi mine in Yunnan province suddenly filled with water following an explosion, leaving 22 miners trapped. The death toll rose to 20 with the recovery of another 14 bodies nearly two weeks after the accident.
(AFP, 4/18/14)
2014 Apr 7, Ecuador issued a letter ordering the US Embassy's military group, about 20 Defense Department employees, to leave the country by month's end, in a further indication of strained relations.
(AP, 4/26/14)
2014 Apr 7, An Egyptian court sentenced four men to up to eight years in prison for practicing homosexuality.
(AFP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, German authorities said reclusive collector Cornelius Gurlitt, who hoarded hundreds of valuable artworks at his Munich home, has agreed to cooperate in efforts to determine which pieces were seized by the Nazis.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, India began to hold the world's biggest election. Hindu nationalist opposition candidate Narendra Modi held a strong lead but was likely to fall short of a majority.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, India's Sun Pharmaceutical Industries said it is buying troubled generic drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories from Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo in deal valuing it a $3.2 billion. In 2008 Sankyo paid $4.6 billion for Ranbaxy.
(AP, 4/7/14)(Econ, 4/12/14, p.67)
2014 Apr 7, Film censors in Indonesia and Malaysia banned the biblical epic "Noah," saying that the portrayal of the ark-building prophet by Russell Crowe was against Islamic laws. Depictions of any prophet are shunned in Islam to avoid worship of a person rather than God.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Iraq a suicide car bomb attack on a police checkpoint near Samarra killed 5 people, including 3 policemen.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Japan and Australia clinched a basic trade deal to cut import tariffs. US and Japanese officials stepped up efforts to reach a parallel agreement that would re-energize stalled talks on a broader regional pact.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Kuwait agreed to supply Egypt with 85,000 barrels of oil daily and 1.5 million tons of fuel for three years as part of a newly agreed commercial deal. The supplies would be valued at market prices and delivered by the end of 2016.
(AFP, 4/8/14)
2014 Apr 7, Latvia said it is joining Lithuania in banning Russian state TV broadcasts because it found that several programs about the Ukraine crisis were tendentious and not in the Baltic nation's security interests. A three-month suspension of RTR Rossiya broadcasts will begin April 8.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Lebanon at least 8 people were killed in fighting between Palestinian factions at the Mieh Mieh refugee camp near Sidon.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Libya residents of the Benghazi observed a general strike to protest against militant violence, as youths blocked streets of the capital in a show of support.
(AFP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Morocco police in a crackdown on violent crime began arresting so-called “Tchermil" (a slang Moroccan term for marinated meat) hooligans. By April 25 police arrested 83 men in Casablanca alone and dramatically reduced muggings.
(SFC, 5/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Apr 7, A UN human rights envoy said severe shortages of food, water and medical care for Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar are part of a long history of persecution against the religious minority that could amount to "crimes against humanity," an allegation denied by the government.
(AP, 4/8/14)
2014 Apr 7, Pakistani security forces killed 30 separatist militants in an offensive in Baluchistan, in one of the biggest clashes in months in the gas-rich province.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, A judge in Puerto Rico ordered a diocese to provide state prosecutors with all confidential documents related to an ongoing sexual abuse probe. The Diocese of Arecibo has defrocked six priests accused of sex abuse, and prosecutors are investigating at least 11 other priests facing similar accusations.
(AP, 4/8/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Rwanda Cassien Ntamuhanga, head of a Christian radio station, disappeared in Kigali without a trace after a ceremony commemorating the 1994 genocide.
(AFP, 4/9/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Somalia two men working for the United Nations were shot dead at Galkayo airport. Former British police officer Simon Davis (57) and his French colleague, researcher Clement Gorrissen (28), were working on links between money transfer systems and piracy.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)(AFP, 4/9/14)
2014 Apr 7, Police in South Africa arrested Makhele Lehlohonolo Joseph Scott (27), a fugitive from neighboring Lesotho. He had escaped from a prison where he was awaiting trial after allegedly confessing to cannibalism and two murders in 2012.
(AP, 4/25/14)
2014 Apr 7, Spain said it has dismantled a group it accused of plotting to send industrial equipment to Iran that could be used for weapon manufacture in violation of international sanctions. Four suspects were arrested.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Sri Lanka's foreign minister says that his country will not cooperate with the United Nations human rights chief when she begins an investigation into alleged war crimes from the island nation's civil war.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Swiss-based Holcim and its French counterpart, Lafarge, two of the world's largest suppliers of building materials, announced plans for a merger of equals.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Syria the strategic area of Rankus in Qalamun went under heavy regime shelling and continuous air raids, ahead of a plan to storm it.
(AFP, 4/8/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Syria a masked gunman assassinated Jesuit Father Francis Van Der Lugt (75), a well-known, elderly Dutch priest, shooting him in the head in the garden of a monastery where he lived in Homs.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, In Ukraine pro-Russian separatists who seized a provincial administration building in the eastern city of Donetsk proclaimed the region independent.
(AP, 4/7/14)
2014 Apr 7, Ukraine's ecology and natural resources minister estimated on that Kiev had lost natural resources and related assets worth 127 billion hryvnias ($10.8 bln) when Russia annexed the Crimea region.
(Reuters, 4/7/14)
2015 Apr 7, It was reported that the Obama administration has notified Congress that it is selling Pakistan 15 Viper attack helicopters, air-to-surface missiles and other forms of military assistance valued at $952 million.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, In Chicago incumbent Mayor Rohm Emanuel was re-elected with 56% of the vote. Jesus Garcia took 44% in a 40% turnout.
(Econ., 4/11/15, p.29)
2015 Apr 7, In central Illinois a private plane returning from the NCAA tournament in Indianapolis crashed killing all 7 people onboard. The dead included Illinois State University’s associate head basketball coach and a deputy athletics director.
(SFC, 4/8/15, p.A7)
2015 Apr 7, Shares of Arena Pharmaceuticals rose after the drug developer said it received an additional patent for its weight loss drug Belviq.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, Bristol-Myers Squibb said it has agreed to acquire a stake in UniQure, to get access to its gene therapy for congestive cardiac failure.
(SFC, 4/8/15, p.C2)
2015 Apr 7, FedEx said it has agreed to take over TNT Express, a Dutch delivery firm, for $4.8 billion in an all cash offer of $8.75 per TNT share.
(SFC, 4/8/15, p.C3)
2015 Apr 7, Albania’s PM Edi Rama said the unification of Albania and Serbia's majority-Albanian former province of Kosovo is "inevitable", whether it happens through membership of the EU or not. The suggestion was denounced in Belgrade.
(Reuters, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, Armenian police detained and raided the offices and homes of four opposition activists suspected of plotting riots on the centennial of the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians that Armenia describes as genocide. The arrested activists of the Founding Parliament opposition group, included its leader, Jirair Sefilian.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, China's finance ministry said Iran has been approved as a founding member of the Beijing-backed Asian Infrastructure Bank (AIIB).
(AFP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, The French presidency under Francois Hollande announced the declassification of archives on Rwanda for the period 1990-95. In 2017 France's highest court ruled that researcher Francois Graner could be denied access to sensitive archives concerning the 1994 genocide in Rwanda because of a law protecting presidential archives for 25 years following the death of a head of state. As former Pres. Mitterrand died in 1996, his archives should become available in 2021.
(AP, 9/15/17)
2015 Apr 7, India’s National Green Tribunal passed a series of stringent measures aimed at curbing air pollution in New Delhi.
(SSFC, 4/12/15, p.A4)
2015 Apr 7, In southern India police killed 5 prisoners, including accused terrorist Syed Viqaruddin, when they tried to escape from a police van in Telangana state.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, In southeastern India police shot and killed at least 20 workers, hired by smugglers of endangered red sandalwood trees, in Andhra Pradesh state. At one of two sites seven of nine workers were shot in the face or back of the head.
(SFC, 4/8/15, p.A4)(SSFC, 4/12/15, p.A4)
2015 Apr 7, The Islamic State group launched English-language radio news bulletins on its al-Bayan radio network. The first bulletin provided an overview of their activities in Iraq, Syria and Libya. An IS group online propaganda video showed the beheading of four men for armed robbery and murder in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh.
(AP, 4/7/15)(AFP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, In Lebanon 3 unidentified militants were killed in clashes with government soldiers who launched an operation near the Syrian border to retake control of a hilltop.
(Reuters, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, Malaysia revived detention without trial when lawmakers approved the Prevention of Terrorism Act bill, that the government said was needed to fight Islamic militants. Critics assailed it as a giant step backward for human rights in the country.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, In Mexico armed robbers made off with 7,000 ounces of gold worth $8.5 million at current prices from Canadian firm McEwen Mining's mine in Sinaloa.
(AFP, 4/8/15)
2015 Apr 7, In Nepal stone-throwing opposition protesters led by Maoists clashed with police in Kathmandu as they enforced a three-day nationwide shutdown of schools, business and transport in the latest violence to mar talks over a new constitution.
(Reuters, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, Dutch businessman Willy Selten was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. He was at the center of a Europe-wide fraud in which falsely labeled horsemeat led to thousands of tons of meat being recalled.
(Reuters, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, Panama's Electoral Tribunal lifted former President Ricardo Martinelli's immunity from prosecution, clearing the way for authorities to investigate him for alleged corruption.
(AP, 4/8/15)
2015 Apr 7, Romania's PM Victor Ponta announced that the sales tax on food and non-alcoholic drinks will be slashed by more than half this summer in an effort to generate jobs and help the poor.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, Russia’s State Duma voted overwhelmingly to strip Ilya Ponomarev of immunity against prosecution. The opposition lawmaker was the sole deputy last year to vote against the annexation of Crimea.
(AP, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, In northern Syria two car bombs set off by Islamic State insurgents killed at least 32 people in Marea, including a senior rival fighter from al Qaeda's Nusra Front.
(Reuters, 4/8/15)(AFP, 4/8/15)
2015 Apr 7, In Tunisia 4 soldiers were killed and six wounded in an ambush in the Kasserine region where the military is battling jihadists. A 5th soldier died of his wounds the next day.
(AFP, 4/7/15)(AFP, 4/8/15)
2015 Apr 7, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani agreed to boost trade and signed a slew of deals at a meeting, but steered clear of directly addressing differences over conflict-ridden Yemen.
(Reuters, 4/7/15)
2015 Apr 7, In central Yemen warplanes from a Saudi-led air coalition bombed a military base controlled by Houthi fighters and their army allies. A website of the Houthi-run defense ministry said two students were killed at a neighboring school. Suspected al Qaeda militants stormed a remote border post with Saudi Arabia, killing at least two soldiers including the senior border guard officer.
(Reuters, 4/7/15)
2016 Apr 7, The United States and its allies conducted 26 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
(Reuters, 4/8/16)
2016 Apr 7, A US appeals court ruled that Puerto Rico can't prohibit gay marriage.
(AP, 4/8/16)
2016 Apr 7, In San Francisco Luis Góngora Pat, a homeless Yucatecan Mayan, was killed by SFPD officers on Shotwell Street between 18th and 19th Streets. Officers claimed that Luis lunged at them with a knife. Eye witnesses that spoke to the media and to community members, including homeless witnesses, denied that Luis threatened officers in any way.
(https://justice4luis.org/luiss-story/)
2016 Apr 7, A Miami-Dade state attorney said 22 people are being charged in an int’l. money laundering case that funneled cash to drug trafficking cartels through Miami businesses. The undercover operation involved about $1 million a month in drug money throughout North America.
(SFC, 4/8/16, p.A6)
2016 Apr 7, Suth Dina, Cambodia's ambassador to South Korea, was charged with corruption-related offenses, following his arrest on April 4. Investigators said his assets increased by $3 million during his two years as envoy.
(AP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, The EU's executive said European Union states should agree on a common list of tax havens in the next semester and impose sanctions on countries that hide EU-taxable revenues in the wake of the Panama leaks.
(Reuters, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Two Indonesian military skydivers plunged to their deaths during an airshow rehearsal in Jakarta.
(AP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Kosovo's powerful former premier Hashim Thaci was sworn in as president in a session boycotted by opposition parties which dispute his election to the top job.
(AFP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, In Kosovo Milovan Bojovic, a former Serb general suspected of war crimes against ethnic Albanian civilians, was detained after illegally crossing into Kosovo at the Merdare border point.
(AP, 4/8/16)
2016 Apr 7, Morocco's official news agency said eight foreigners have been expelled for supporting prisoners convicted for their roles in deadly protests in Western Sahara.
(AP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi announced that her government plans to release all political prisoners as quickly as possible, making the declaration her first act in her newly created job as state counsellor.
(AP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, In Romania a businessman and five others suspected of defrauding a spa that dates from the Roman empire of 30 million euros (about $34 million) were detained. Iosif Armas, chairman of a company that manages the Herculaneum Spa, and other shareholders were suspected of illegally selling assets and taking out loans in the spa's name that could not be repaid.
(AP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Saudi King Salman started a five-day visit to Cairo in a show of support for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, with the leaders due to sign a raft of investment deals.
(AFP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Serbia's presidency defended its decision to decorate Sudan's president and genocide suspect Omar al-Bashir, saying he was honoured for refusing to recognise Kosovo.
(AFP, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Syrian state television reported that Islamic State fighters have kidnapped 300 cement workers in an area northeast of Damascus where the militants launched an assault against government forces this week.
(Reuters, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, In Turkey Mustafa Tanriverdi, who headed a factory run by the state-owned Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation, was arrested in Ankara as he left a restaurant after arranging to sell the designs to an official of a US-based company for a total of 1.2 million Turkish lira ($420,000).
(AP, 4/8/16)
2016 Apr 7, Vietnam demanded China move a controversial oil rig on and abandon plans to start drilling in waters where jurisdiction is unclear, the latest sign of festering unease among the two communist neighbors.
(Reuters, 4/7/16)
2016 Apr 7, Vietnam’s rubber-stamp parliament elected Nguyen Xuan Phuc (61) as prime minister.
(SFC, 4/8/16, p.A2)
2017 Apr 7, President Donald Trump pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to do more to curb North Korea's nuclear program and help reduce the gaping US trade deficit with Beijing in talks as he toned down the strident anti-China rhetoric of his election campaign.
(Reuters, 4/8/17)
2017 Apr 7, The US Senate voted 54 to 45 to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court following a rules change a day earlier.
(SFC, 4/8/17, p.A7)
2017 Apr 7, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced 173 fellowships, each valued at about $50,000, to artists, writers and academics from the US and Canada.
(SFC, 4/7/17, p.D3)
2017 Apr 7, Arizona’s Rep. Gov. Doug Ducey signed a major school voucher expansion bill that will extend eligibility to all 1.1 million state schoolchildren.
(SFC, 4/8/17, p.A6)
2017 Apr 7, California’s Gov. Jerry Brown declared an officials end to the state’s drought.
(SFC, 4/8/17, p.A1)
2017 Apr 7, In Maryland a federal judge approved an agreement between Baltimore and the US Dept. of Justice to overhaul the city’s police department.
(SFC, 4/8/17, p.A5)
2017 Apr 7, In Oregon a small plane crashed near Harrisburg as it approached the Eugene Airport under high winds. Four people were killed.
(SSFC, 4/9/17, p.A6)
2017 Apr 7, In South Carolina four inmates were found dead at Kirkland Correctional Institution in Columbia. Two convicts serving life sentences were soon charged with the murders.
(SFC, 4/8/17, p.A5)(SSFC, 4/9/17, p.A12)
2017 Apr 7, In Texas a woman fatally shot her stepfather, critically injured her mother and killed two other people in the Houston area before killing herself.
(SSFC, 4/9/17, p.A6)
2017 Apr 7, The Basque separatist group ETA, which has promised to give up all its remaining arms by April 8, said it has handed over the weapons to members of "civil society" in France. Analysts estimated ETA's arsenal at 130 handguns and two tons of explosives.
(AFP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, In Brazil six inmates died at the Unidade Prisional do Puraquequara in Manaus where riots killed dozens of prisoners earlier this year. The circumstances of the deaths were unclear.
(AP, 4/8/17)
2017 Apr 7, In Cambodia Tan Saravuth, a Cambodian-American man, was arrested in Phnom Penh for procuring children for prostitution, a crime punishable by seven to 15 years in prison.
(AP, 4/11/17)
2017 Apr 7, The European Commission cleared the multi-billion dollar buy-out bid for European pay-TV giant Sky by 21st Century Fox without conditions as the tie-up does not undercut competition.
(AFP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, The German government announced steps to choke off state campaign finance for the far-right NPD party, after a failed court bid to outlaw the xenophobic fringe group. The group numbered around 6,000 members.
(AFP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, Doctors Without Borders said they have begun a measles vaccination program in Guinea after 14 deaths and 3,400 cases were confirmed this year.
(SFC, 4/8/17, p.A2)
2017 Apr 7, Indonesian counter-terrorism police arrested three suspected militants who were planning to attack a police station in East Java.
(AP, 4/8/17)
2017 Apr 7, Kosovo President Hashim Thaci bowed to pressure from traditional allies the United States and NATO by putting off plans to establish an army strongly opposed by the country's minority Serbs.
(Reuters, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, In Myanmar a ferry boat carrying wedding guests capsized after colliding with a boat carrying gravel in the Ngawun river of the Ayeyarwaddy delta, killing at least 20 people and leaving more than a dozen missing.
(AFP, 4/8/17)
2017 Apr 7, Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev complained that US cruise missile strikes on a Syrian airbase were one step away from clashing with the Russian military. Russia the US-led coalition of its intent to suspend a communication channel for avoiding air accidents in the crowded airspace over Syria.
(Reuters, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, Tens of thousands of South Africans demonstrated peacefully in a national outpouring of anger at scandal-tainted Pres. Jacob Zuma. A second agency lowered the country's credit rating to junk status a week after the firing of the respected finance minister.
(AP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, In Spain Russian computer programmer, Pyotr Levashov, was arrested in the city of Barcelona. Levashov was suspected of being involved in hacking attacks linked to alleged interference in last year's US election.
(Reuters, 4/9/17)
2017 Apr 7, In Sweden a truck slammed into a crowd of people outside a busy department store in central Stockholm, killing two Swedes, a British man and a Belgian woman. PM Stefan Lofven described it as a "terror attack". Police soon detained suspect Rakhmat Akilov (39), a native of Uzbekistan, who had been denied asylum last year. Uzbekistan’s foreign minister later said Akilov had been recruited by the Islamic State and had encouraged fellow nationals to fight for the IS in Syria. A 5th victim died three weeks later of her injuries.
(AFP, 4/7/17)(AP, 4/8/17)(Reuters, 4/11/17)(SFC, 4/15/17, p.A3)(AP, 4/28/17)
2017 Apr 7, In Syria opposition fighters fired shells at a government-controlled neighborhood of the capital Damascus killing one person and wounding 20.
(AP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, The US blasted Syria’s Shayrat air base early today (local time) with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. 58 of 59 missiles struck their intended targets. Seven people were reported killed.
(AP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, In southern Thailand suspected Muslim insurgents set off dozens of bombs, bringing down power lines and setting tires on fire to block roads.
(AP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, Ugandan police detained an academic who has been critical online of what she calls "despotic family rule" in this East African country. Stella Nyanzi, a research fellow at Uganda's Makerere University, was arrested for violating a law against misusing computers. On May 10 Nyanzi was freed on bail.
(AP, 4/9/17)(AP, 5/10/17)
2017 Apr 7, The UN Security Council called an emergency meeting to discuss the developments in Syria.
(AP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 7, Venezuelan authorities banned Henrique Capriles, a top opposition leader, from public office for 15 years. Capriles rejected the move and insisted he would retain his post as governor, branding Maduro a dictator.
(AFP, 4/8/17)
2018 Apr 7, In Illinois three passengers on a private bus were fatally shot. Rockford police identified passenger Raheem King as the shooter and he remained at large.
(SFC, 4/9/18, p.A4)
2018 Apr 7, In NYC an apartment fire on the 50th floor of Trump Tower left one person dead.
(SSFC, 4/8/18, p.A9)
2018 Apr 7, Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (72) turned himself in to police to begin a 12-year sentence for money laundering and corruption.
(AP, 4/8/18)
2018 Apr 7, British police said they are deploying 300 more officers on the streets of London this weekend to confront a spike in stabbing and shootings that has sparked fears about rising crime.
(AP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, Air France cancelled hundreds of its flights as pilots, cabin crew and ground staff pursued a fifth day of strikes aimed at securing higher pay.
(AFP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, In Germany Jens Ruether (48) drove a camper van into a group of people sitting outside a restaurant in Muenster, killing two people. He then shot himself dead. Authorities later said Ruether acted alone and appears to have had mental health problems. A third person died three weeks later from injuries sustained in the crash.
(Reuters, 4/8/18)(AP, 4/26/18)
2018 Apr 7, India agreed to construct a rail link to Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, and to open up inland waterways in the landlocked Himalayan nation. Analysts said the latest Indian move was spurred by China's expansive infrastructure projects in Nepal as both Asian giants jostle for influence.
(Reuters, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, In India a court in Jodhpur granted bail to Bollywood superstar Salman Khan, who will be allowed to remain free while he appeals his conviction on charges of poaching rare deer in a wildlife preserve two decades ago.
(AP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, In western Iraq a suicide attack targeting the Al-Hal political party headquarters in Hit, Anbar province, killed four people and injured seven others, including a candidate in polls set for May.
(AFP, 4/8/18)
2018 Apr 7, Japan activated its first marine unit since World War Two trained to counter invaders occupying Japanese islands along the edge of the East China Sea that Tokyo fears are vulnerable to attack by China.
(Reuters, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, In western Japan Yoshitane Yamasaki (73), a father who allegedly confined his mentally ill son, now 42, in a small cage for more than two decades, was arrested.
(AFP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, North and South Korea held talks over establishing a telephone hotline between their leaders and other communication issues ahead of a rare summit between the rivals later this month.
(AP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, Pakistan's PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said Afghanistan has accepted his offer to revive stalled peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
(AP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, A Pakistani government official says Indian troops have fired across the Line of Control in the disputed Kashmir region, killing a woman and wounding six others.
(AP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, In Pakistan a car carrying American diplomat Col. Joseph Emanuel Hall accidently hit a Pakistani motorcyclist in Islamabad, killing him on the spot. Pakistani TV stations soon aired footage showing a white vehicle running a red light and striking a motorcyclist. The family of the motorcyclist, identified by police as Ateeq Baig (22), lodged charges against the US. Police soon requested a travel ban on Hall.
(AP, 4/7/18)(AP, 4/8/18)(AP, 4/10/18)
2018 Apr 7, Palestinian Yaser Murtaja (30), a cameraman for Palestinian Ain Media, died after being wounded by Israeli fire a day earlier while covering deadly protests along the Israel-Gaza border.
(Reuters, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, In South Sudan armed men fired at the vehicle marked with logos of the Catholic Organization for Relief and Development Aid as it travelled on a road near the town of Bentiu and one of the workers died. A local worker with the UNIDO organization was killed near Leer town in Unity state.
(http://tinyurl.com/ya6c24je)(SFC, 4/11/18, p.A2)
2018 Apr 7, In Switzerland Karl-Erivan Haub (58), heir to the German Tengelmann retail empire, disappeared in Zermatt while training for a ski mountaineering race on the famous Matterhorn peak. A search for him was officially called off after six months.
(AP, 4/11/18)(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Apr 7, Syrian government forces pressed their offensive against the last rebel-held town in eastern Ghouta near Damascus under the cover of airstrikes as shelling of civilian areas on both sides claimed more lives. the Britain-based Observatory said another eight civilians were killed as more bombing raids slammed into Douma. The Army of Islam said its fighters repelled all government attacks that began a day earlier, adding that 17 Syrian soldiers were killed. An alleged chlorine gas attack killed at least 40 people in Douma. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 80 people were killed in Douma.
(AP, 4/7/18)(AFP, 4/7/18)(AP, 4/8/18)
2018 Apr 7, Taiwan's Central News Agency said that Taiwan's Ministry of National Defence confirmed the US Department of State had agreed to grant the license needed to sell the technology to Taiwan, so the self-ruled island could build its own submarines.
(Reuters, 4/9/18)
2018 Apr 7, Turkey's interior ministry said authorities will deport close to 600 illegal Afghan migrants in eastern Turkey back to Kabul this weekend.
(Reuters, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, Turkey's military said some 108 Kurdish militants have been "neutralized" in operations targeting southeast Turkey and northern Iraq over the past week.
(AP, 4/7/18)
2018 Apr 7, The Vatican police force arrested Msgr. Carlo Alberto Capella, who once worked at its US embassy and was recalled last year after the US State Department said the priest may have violated child pornography laws.
(Reuters, 4/7/18)
2019 Apr 7, US Pres. Donald Trump announced in a tweet that US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan would be taking over as acting head of the department. This followed the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen amid President Donald Trump's growing frustration and bitterness over the number of Central American families crossing the southern border.
(AP, 4/8/19)
2019 Apr 7, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was named the recipient of the 2019 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.
(SFC, 4/8/19, p.A5)
2019 Apr 7, In Arizona three people were killed and three firefighters seriously injured when a pickup truck collided with a fire engine at an intersection in Phoenix.
(SFC, 4/9/19, p.A6)
2019 Apr 7, In Australia Dutchman Wiebe Wakker completed an epic 95,000 km (59,000 mile) journey by electric car in Sydney in a bid to prove the viability of such vehicles in tackling climate change.
(AFP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, In Brazil thousands of supporters, many chanting "Free Lula!," protested outside the jail where former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva is being held on the anniversary of his incarceration.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Britain's Jewish Labour Movement, which is affiliated to the main opposition Labour Party, passed a motion of no confidence in party leader Jeremy Corbyn over his handling of anti-Semitism complaints.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, In Cuba more than 400 animal-lovers peacefully marched more than a mile through Havana, shouting slogans and waving signs calling for an end to animal cruelty in their country.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, In Egypt a police officer and his driver were killed when unknown gunmen opened fire on a patrol in Cairo.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, A majority of Iranian parliamentarians said Iran will take reciprocal action against the United States if Washington designates the elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as terrorists.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Authorities in India's portion of disputed Kashmir began enforcing a ban on the movement of civilian vehicles on a key highway to keep it open exclusively for military and paramilitary convoys two days a week.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Eastern Libyan forces carried out an air strike on the southern part of Tripoli, escalating an operation to take the capital despite calls for a truce from the UN. At least 35 people, including civilians, have been killed on both sides over the last 4 days.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Maldives President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih's party declared a sweeping parliamentary election victory that could give him a free hand in efforts to restore political freedoms and tackle corruption.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, UN and government officials said at least 847 people have been killed by Cyclone Idai, the flooding it caused and heavy rains after it hit Mozambique (602), Zimbabwe (259) and Malawi (60).
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, A presidential aide and the police chief said Nigeria has suspended mining in the restive northwestern state of Zamfara, amid concerns that illegal miners were connected to a surge in banditry.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, In northern Nigeria 14 people were killed in Katsina state in clashes between cattle thieves and a civilian militia armed by the government to support the security forces.
(AFP, 4/9/19)
2019 Apr 7, In Pakistan a vehicle tumbled off a mountainous road into a river, killing seven people.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Dozens of neglected animals were evacuated from a ramshackle Gaza zoo in the fourth and largest such rescue mission in the blockaded Palestinian enclave. Vets and volunteers from Four Paws International transported some 40 animals into Israel from the neglected zoo in the southern town of Rafah.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, The lawyer for Vladimir Barsukov, an imprisoned Russian organized crime figure, says the man has been charged in the 1998 assassination of reformist lawmaker Galina Starovoitova. Barsukov has been behind bars since 2007 and is serving sentences for murder, extortion, fraud and money laundering.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Rwandan President Paul Kagame began a week of solemn ceremonies to commemorate the lives of 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus murdered during the Rwandan genocide, a three-month-killing spree that began 25 years ago.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Saudi media reported that four attackers targeted a security checkpoint with guns and explosives in eastern Saudi Arabia as they tried to flee the country, leading to the death of two and the arrest of two others.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Sudanese police fired tear gas at thousands of protesters who rallied outside the army headquarters for a second day urging the military to back them in demanding President Omar al-Bashir resign. Security forces killed at least five protesters over the weekend.
(AFP, 4/7/19)(AP, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Sudan suffered a total power blackout.
(Reuters, 4/7/19)
2019 Apr 7, Syrian government forces and insurgents exchanged a barrage of rockets in the country's northwest that killed at least 8 people in Idlib province and another 5 after a government-run hospital was hit in Hama province.
(AP, 4/7/19)(SFC, 4/8/19, p.A2)
2019 Apr 7, Ugandan authorities said that Kimberley Sue Endecott (35) and her driver, Jean Paul, had been rescued unharmed after being seized by gunmen in Queen Elizabeth National Park. Undisclosed sources later said that a ransom of $30,000 had been paid.
(AP, 4/8/19)
2019 Apr 7, Yemeni medical officials said a big explosion at a warehouse in Sanaa killed at least seven children in nearby schools.
(AP, 4/7/19)
2020 Apr 7, US Pres. Donald Trump acknowledged that the coronavirus is infecting and killing black people in the US at disproportionately high rates, and said that the authorities were working to provide more information. Trump also threatened to freeze US funding to the World Health Organization, saying the international group had “missed the call" on the coronavirus pandemic.
(NY Times, 4/8/20)(AP, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, The Trump administration granted a license to General Electric Co to supply engines for China's new COMAC C919 passenger jet.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, The US Navy said at least 230 crew members of the USS Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive. Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly resigned over fallout from his ouster of Capt. Brett Crozier.
(AP, 4/8/20)(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A7)
2020 Apr 7, Deaths in the US due to the coronavirus reached about 11,000, with about 370,000 confirmed infections. The number of confirmed infections of the novel coronavirus exceeded 1.34 million globally and the death toll crossed 76,000.
(AP, 4/7/20)(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, A US appeals court handed a win to the Trump administration in its efforts to resume federal executions by tossing a district judge's injunction that blocked four death penalty sentences from being carried out.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, California reported 14,475 cases of the coronavirus and 400 deaths. SF Bay Area confirmed cases numbered 3,880 and 107 deaths.
(sfist.com, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said over 138,000 people in the state have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Cuomo announced the state’s highest one-day total of virus-related deaths: 731. New York City had at least 3,202 deaths. New Jersey and Connecticut also reported one-day highs.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)(NY Times, 4/8/20)(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A5)
2020 Apr 7, Hal Willner, American music producer, died with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 at his home in Manhattan.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Willner)(Econ, 4/18/20, p.74)
2020 Apr 7, John Prine (73), the country-folk singer and songwriter whose lyrics made him a favorite of Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and others, died in Nashville of complications due to the coronavirus.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Prine)(NY Times, 4/8/20)
2020 Apr 7, In Tennessee Idris Abdus-Salaam (33), a truck driver from North Carolina, fatally stabbed three female emplyees at a Pilot travel center before he was killed by a deputy.
(SFC, 4/9/20, p.A3)
2020 Apr 7, A federal appeals court sided with Texas in allowing it to ban most abortions while the state is under an emergency order that limits non-essential surgeries during the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Washington DC reported 114 new cases of the coronavirus bringing its total to 1,211 and 22 deaths.
(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A5)
2020 Apr 7, Wisconsin voters lined up to cast ballots across the state, ignoring a stay-at-home order in the midst of a pandemic to participate in the state's presidential primary election. Voters in the state's Democratic primary endorsed Joe Biden. Voters also elected Democrat Judge Jill Karofsky to the state's Supreme Court.
(AP, 4/7/20)(SFC, 4/15/20, p.A3)
2020 Apr 7, Exxon Mobil Corp throttled back investment in shale, natural gas and deep water production, cutting planned capital spending by 30% this year as the coronavirus pandemic saps energy demand and oil prices tumble.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, World stock markets posted sharp gains as signs of progress in curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus in both Europe and the United States fueled investors' appetite for risk.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Armenia reported 853 confirmed cases of the coronavirus as of today with 87 people having recovered from the infection and eight deaths.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh confirmed its first case of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Bangladesh police arrested Abdul Majed, a former military captain and fugitive in the 1975 killing of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. A trial in 1998 had sentenced a dozen defendents including Majed for the killing of Rahman and most of his family members.
(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A2)
2020 Apr 7, Benin has ordered people in a dozen cities to wear face masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Benmin has 22 confirmed cases.
(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A4)
2020 Apr 7, Glencore, a British multinational trading and mining company, said it would stop operations at its Mopani mine in Zambia due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Econ., 5/2/20, p.35)
2020 Apr 7, Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry said a senior official at the Bulgarian embassy in The Hague has been recalled for illegally collecting what he called a coronavirus tax from visitors seeking consular assistance.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Mainland China reported no coronavirus deaths for the first time since the pandemic began and a drop in new cases.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In China a one-sentence notice issued by the party-government joint disciplinary watchdog body in Beijing’s western district said Ren Zhiqiang, prominent Communist party member, was undergoing a “review and monitoring investigation." Ren dropped from sight in mid-March after publishing an online essay that criticized the leadership’s handling of the virus outbreak that originated in December in central China.
(AP, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Colombia extended a nationwide quarantine due to the coronavirus until April 27.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, An Ecuadoran court found former Pres. Rafael Correa (57) guilty of corruption and sentenced him in absentia to eight years in prison. Correa has been living in his wife's native Belgium since 2017.
(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A2)
2020 Apr 7, It was reported that sales of sex toys in Denmark have more than doubled after Danes were told to stay at home to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, European Union countries adopted new rules for truck drivers' working conditions, despite several countries calling for the reforms to be halted to help support vulnerable transport firms amid the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, The European Commission imposed provisional anti-dumping duties on some stainless steel products from China, Indonesia and Taiwan, nearly eight months after launching a probe into low-price imports.
(Reuters, 4/11/20)
2020 Apr 7, Finland said it will start tracking the spread of the coronavirus in its population with randomized antibody tests.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In France almost 99,000 people across the country have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and nearly 9,000 of them have died.
(ABC News, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In Germany a man (29) in Celle fatally stabbed a teenage refugee (15) from Iraq. The man later claimed to have been under the influence of drugs.
(SFC, 4/27/20, p.A2)
2020 Apr 7, Hong Kong reported 21 new cases of the coronavirus for a total of 936.
(https://tinyurl.com/sdefuk6)
2020 Apr 7, Leaders of Hungary's Roma people said the coronavirus pandemic posed a grave threat to the already precarious status of the marginalized minority, with many Roma feeling abandoned by the nationalist government.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, India said it will allow limited exports of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, that US President Donald Trump has touted as a potential weapon in the fight against the virus.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Iran's parliament convened for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak forced its doors to close, as the country reported a drop in new infections for the seventh straight day. The health ministry reported 133 new coronavirus deaths, saying the overall fatalities had reached 3,872. Another 2,089 infections were recorded nationwide, bringing the total to 62,589.
(AFP, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Israel's domestic security agency said it arrested an Israeli citizen last month alleged to have spied for Iran. The man was indicted today for “serious security-related offenses".
(AP, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe moved to declare a state of emergency in seven prefectures including Tokyo and Osaka, and announced a record economic stimulus package as the country braces for a surge in coronavirus infections.
(Bloomberg, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, The Latvian government said it was extending until May 12 the state of emergency that has allowed it to implement a string of measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus in the Baltic country. Latvia has reported 548 confirmed cases and 2 deaths.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In Libya rockets rained down on Tripoli, the second day of heavy bombardment by eastern-based forces that struck one of the city’s largest hospitals. Libya has confirmed 20 cases of the coronavirus, all in the country’s west except for one in the eastern city of Benghazi.
(AP, 4/8/20)
2020 Apr 7, Mali has recorded 46 positive cases of COVID-19 disease, including one member of the UN peacekeeping force, and five deaths.
(AP, 4/8/20)
2020 Apr 7, Mexico has nearly 2,800 confirmed COVID-19 infections and 141 deaths. A plane arrived in Mexico with 10 tons of gloves and masks from China to help with the coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 4/7/20)(Reuters, 4/10/20)
2020 Apr 7, Morocco has so far reported 1,141 coronavirus cases and 83 deaths. As of today Moroccans who venture outside their homes without wearing face masks risk prison sentences of up to three months and a fine of up to $126 (£102). Since March 19 more than 8,600 people have been arrested and prosecuted for flouting lockdown rule.
(BBC, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In northern Mozambique Islamist militants killed around 52 people in the village of Xitaxi in Muidumbe district. The attack only came to light on April 21.
(BBC, 4/22/20)
2020 Apr 7, Pakistan has recorded 4,004 cases of the coronavirus and 54 deaths. Pakistan's military promised that dozens of doctors who were briefly jailed for protesting a lack of protective equipment will get the equipment they need.
(AP, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, The west African island nation of Sao Tome e Principe confirmed its first case of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 4/8/20, p.A4)
2020 Apr 7, Saudi Arabia has so far reported 2,795 cases and 41 deaths due to the coronavirus, the highest in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Health Minister Tawfiq al-Rabiah said four studies by infectious disease experts indicated the number of cases was likely to reach between 10,000 and 200,000 in coming weeks. King Salman ordered the temporary release from prison of people serving sentences related to unpaid private debts, and ordered the suspension of all rulings related to such cases in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)(AP, 4/8/20)
2020 Apr 7, Singapore's government passed a new law in parliament banning all social gatherings in homes and public spaces to curb the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). The Health Ministry confirmed 106 new cases of coronavirus infections, most of them locally transmitted, taking the city-state's total to 1,481.
(https://tinyurl.com/yd7alwax)Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, South Africa with 1,686 positive cases now had the highest national total. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that at least 10,075 people across Africa have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. So far, 487 people diagnosed with COVID-19 have died.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)(ABC News, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In Spain the pace of coronavirus deaths ticked up for the first time in five days, with 743 people succumbing overnight. Spain moved to tackle a shortfall of farm workers due to the coronavirus crisis by authorizing the temporary hiring of tens of thousands of immigrants or jobless people.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, Turkmenistan gathered thousands of citizens for mass exercise events to mark World Health Day, ignoring the global trend for social distancing to fight the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Turkmenistan has yet to register a case of the novel coronavirus.
(AFP, 4/8/20)
2020 Apr 7, The UN patent agency said China was the biggest source of applications for international patents in the world last year, pushing the United States out of the top spot it has held since the global system was set up more than 40 years ago.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Apr 7, In Venezuela to date the coronavirus has claimed only seven confirmed fatalities with at least 144 confirmed cases. A party by offspring of the ruling elite on March 11 on an island in the Los Roques archipelago led to a cluster of infections. On March 20 embattled leader Nicolás Maduro said on state TV that practically everyone at the party is testing positive.
(AP, 4/7/20)(Economist, 4/4/20, p.24)
2020 Apr 7, Yemeni port official Saleh (60) tested positive for COVID-19. A 2nd test on April 10 also came back positive. This was Yemen's first case of the virus. Health officials then scrambled to identify more than 150 people in the southern Hadhramout region who had met and dealt with the man in the two weeks before he was diagnosed.
(Reuters, 4/27/20)
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