text:
Today in History - August 24
For Asian History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/2019/08/24
79AD Aug 24, Pliny the Elder, Roman naturalist, witnessed the eruption of long-dormant Mount Vesuvius and was overcome by the fumes as he tried to rescue refugees. The eruption buried the Roman cities of Pompeii, Stabiae, Herculaneum and other, smaller settlements in 13 feet of volcanic ash and pumice. An estimated 20,000 people died. The event was described by Pliny the Younger, the elder's nephew, in a letter to Tacitus.
(HFA, '96, p.36)(DD-EVTT, p.70)(AP, 8/24/97)(WUD, 1994, p.1106)(SFC, 9/1/97, p.A2)(HNQ, 6/16/98)
410 Aug 24, Rome was overrun by the Visigoths, an event that symbolized the fall of the Western Roman Empire. German barbarians sacked Rome. In 2020 Douglas Boin authored "Alaric the Goth'>
(AP, 8/24/97)(HN, 8/24/98)(Econ., 6/20/20, p.72)
1103 Aug 24, Magnus III Berbein, [Blootbeen], King of Norway (1093-1103), died.
1113 Aug 24, Geoffrey Plantagenet, conquered Normandy, was born in France.
1215 Aug 24, Pope Innocent III, following a request from King John, declared the Magna Carta invalid. The barons of England soon retaliated by inviting King Philip of France to come to England. Philip accepted the offer.
(ON, 7/04, p.2)(Econ, 12/20/14, p.34)
1217 Aug 24, Eustace "the Monk", French buccaneer, was killed in battle.
1349 Aug 24, Some 6,000 Jews, blamed for the Bubonic Plague, were killed in Mainz.
1349 Aug 24, Jews of Cologne Germany set themselves on fire to avoid baptism.
1391 Aug 24, Jews of Palma Majorca, Spain, were massacred.
1516 Aug 24, At the Battle of Marj Dabik, north of Aleppo, the Turks beat Syria. Suliman I (Selim the Grim), the Ottoman Sultan, routed the Mamelukes (Egypt) with the support of artillery capturing Aleppo and Damascus. This opened the way to 400 years of Ottoman Turkish rule over most of the Arab world.
(PC, 1992, p.169)(Econ, 11/14/09, p.101)
1542 Aug 24, In South America, Gonzalo Pizarro returned to the mouth of the Amazon River after having sailed the length of the great river as far as the Andes Mountains.
1572 Aug 24, The slaughter of French Protestants at the hands of Catholics began in Paris as Charles IX of France attempted to rid the country of Huguenots. Charles, under the sway of his mother Catherine de Medici, believed the Huguenot Protestants were plotting a revolution. France's fourth war of religion started with the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, in which 50,000 Huguenots and their leader, Admiral Gaspard de Chastillon, Count the Coligny, were killed in and around Paris. Meyerbeer's 1836 opera "Les Huguenots" was centered on the struggle. The House of Guise played a leading role in the massacre. In 2009 Stuart Carroll authored "Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe."
(AP, 8/24/97)(HN, 8/24/98)(WSJ, 11/23/99, p.A21)(Econ, 11/7/09, p.78)
1591 Aug 24, Robert Herrick, English poet (Gather ye rosebuds) was baptized.
1595 Aug 24, Thomas Digges, English astronomer (Universe Infinite), died.
1662 Aug 24, An Act of Uniformity, a part of the Clarendon Code (1661-1665), was passed by the English Parliament and required that England's college fellows and clergymen accept the newly published Book of Common Prayer. Charles II attempted to suspend the operation of the Clarendon Code by issuing a 2nd Declaration of Indulgence, but opposition from Parliament forced him to retract it in 1663.
(PC, 1992, p.249)(www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=the%20Clarendon%20Code)
1669 Aug 24, Alessandro Marcello (d.1747), composer, was born in Venice.
1680 Aug 24, Colonel Thomas Blood, Irish adventurer who stole the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London in 1671, died. Captured after the theft, he insisted on seeing King Charles II, who pardoned him.
1682 Aug 24, Duke James of York gave Delaware to William Penn.
1750 Aug 24, Laetitia Bonaparte-Ramolino, mother of Napoleon, was born.
1751 Aug 24, Thomas Colley was executed in England for drowning a supposed witch.
1759 Aug 24, William Wilberforce (d.1833), was born in Hull, Yorkshire, England. He became best known for his efforts relating to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.
(www.nndb.com/people/824/000049677/)(HNQ, 12/6/02)
1759 Aug 24, Ewald C. von Kleist (44), German poet, died.
1733 Aug 24, David Traugott Nicolai (d.1799), composer, was born.
1770 Aug 24, Thomas Chatterton (b.1752), English poet (Revenge), committed suicide.
1780 Aug 24, King Louis XVI abolished torture as a means to get suspects to confess.
1787 Aug 24, Wolfgang A. Mozart completed his viola sonata in A, K526.
1810 Aug 24, Theodore Parker, anti-slavery movement leader, was born.
1814 Aug 24, 5,000 British troops under the command of General Robert Ross marched into Washington, D.C., after defeating an American force at Bladensburg, Maryland. It was in retaliation for the American burning of the parliament building in York (Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada. Meeting no resistance from the disorganized American forces, the British burned the White House, the Capitol and almost every public building in the city before a downpour extinguished the fires. President James Madison and his wife fled from the advancing enemy, but not before Dolly Madison saved the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. This wood engraving of Washington in flames was printed in London weeks after the event to celebrate the British victory.
(AP, 8/24/97)(HNPD, 8/24/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bladensburg)
1816 Aug 24, Daniel Gooch, laid 1st successful transatlantic cables, was born.
1817 Aug 24, Aleksei K. Tolstoy, [Kozjma Prutkov], Russian poet, writer, was born.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/aleksey_konstantinovich_tolstoy)
1824 Aug 24, Simon Bolivar's army beat the Spanish in Peru in the Battle at Junin.
(PC, 1992, p.394)
1831 Aug 24, John Henslow asked Charles Darwin to travel with him on HMS Beagle.
1847 Aug 24, Charlotte Bronte, using the pseudonym Currer Bell, sent a manuscript of "Jane Eyre" to her publisher in London.
1849 Aug 24, Venice, under Daniele Manin (1804-1857), surrendered to Austrians under Count Radetsky, following a siege since July 20 after proclaiming independence. Austrian forces had launched balloons laden with explosives against Venice.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniele_Manin)(Econ 6/10/17, TQ p.4)
1853 Aug 24, The 1st potato chips were prepared by Chef George Crum at Saratoga Springs, NY.
1857 Aug 24, The New York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Co. failed, sparking the Panic of 1857. The sharp but short 1857-58 financial crash in the US was touched off by the failure of the New York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company. Over speculation in real estate and railroad securities fed the panic. Financial crashes spread to Liverpool, Glasgow, Paris, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Vienna.
(AP, 8/24/07)(WSJ, 9/28/95c, p.A-18)(Econ, 4/12/14, p.51)
1858 Aug 24, Richmond "Daily Dispatch" reported 90 blacks arrested for learning.
1862 Aug 24, The C.S.S. Alabama was commissioned at sea off Portugal's Azore Islands, beginning a career that would see over 60 Union merchant vessels sunk or destroyed by the Confederate raider. The ship was built in secret in the in Liverpool shipyards, and a diplomatic crisis between the US government and Britain ensued when the Union uncovered the ship's birth place.
1863 Aug 24, In San Francisco actress Adah Isaacs Menken (1835-1868) appeared at Maguire's Opera House in the play "Mazeppa" wearing a scanty white blouse and shorts on the back of a rearing horse.
1869 Aug 24, Cornelius Swarthout of Troy, New York, patented the waffle iron.
1872 Aug 24, Max Beerbohm (d.1956), critic, caricaturist, writer, wit (Saturday Review), was born in England. His work included "Nobody ever died of laughter."
(AP, 4/9/97)(MC, 8/24/02)
1880 Aug 24, Joshua L. Cowen, inventor of the electric train, was born.
1889 Aug 24, Jan E. Matzeliger, Suriname inventor (shoe lacing machine), died.
1889 Aug 24, Auguste Neal, a convicted murderer, was executed in Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, becoming the first and only person to be executed by guillotine in North America. The device was specially shipped from Martinique for the execution.
(SSFC, 11/16/08, p.E5)
1890 Aug 24, Jean Rhys, author of "Wild Sargasso Sea," was born.
1891 Aug 24, Thomas Edison filed a patent for the motion picture camera.
1893 Aug 24, A fire in south Chicago left 5,000 people homeless.
1895 Aug 24, Richard Cushing, the director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, was born.
1896 Aug 24, Thomas Brooks was shot and killed by an unknown assailant, beginning a six year feud with the McFarland family.
1898 Aug 24, Malcolm Cowley, poet and translator, literary critic and social historian was born. He wrote "The Dream of the Golden Mountains."
1898 Aug 24, Ernest Narjot (b.1826), French-born painter, died in SF. He came to California with the Gold Rush in 1849 and became one of the state's foremost artists. Much of his work was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.
(SFCM, 10/28/01, p.20)
1899 Aug 24, Jorge Luis Borges (d.1986), Argentine poet and philosophical essayist, was born in Buenos Aires.
(WUD, 1994, p.171)(WSJ, 9/21/98, p.A26)(AP, 8/24/99)
1902 Aug 24, Fernand Braudel (d.1985), French historian, was born. He was one of the most important historiographers of the 20th century: "History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all."
(AP, 9/5/97)(DT internet 11/28/97)
1904 Aug 24, In the field battle at Liaoyang, China, some 200,000 Japanese faced 150,000 Russians. The Japanese defeated the Russians in October.
(MC, 8/24/02)(PC, 1992, p.654)
1905 Aug 24, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, blues singer, was born. He was a major influence on Elvis Presley.
1909 Aug 24, Workers started pouring concrete for Panama Canal.
1912 Aug 24, US passed an anti-gag law giving federal employees the right to petition government.
1912 Aug 24, By an act of Congress, Alaska was given a territorial legislature of two houses.
1912 Aug 24, NYC held a ticker tape parade for Jim Thorpe and victorious US Olympians.
1915 Aug 24, Alice H.B. Sheldon, science fiction writer, was born. He also worked as an artist, CIA photo-intelligence operative, lecturer at American University and major in the U.S. Army Air Force.
1923 Aug 24, Kate Douglas Wiggin (66), author (US kindergarten movement), died.
1925 Aug 24, The Svalbarg Treaty took effect, at the same time as the Svalbard Act regulated the archipelago and the first governor, Johannes Gerckens Bassøe, took office. The Svalbard Act made Svalbard a full part of the Kingdom of Norway.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard)
1929 Aug 24, Yasser Arafat (d.2004), leader of the Palestinian Liberation Movement (Nobel 1994), was born in Cairo according to his Cairo birth certificate. He was the 5th child of Palestinian merchant Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini. In 1998 Said K. Aburish published his biography "Arafat: From Defender to Dictator."
(SFC, 11/11/04, p.A18)(www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Yasser-Arafat)
1929 Aug 24, In the Hebron massacre 65–68 Jews are killed by Arabs and the remaining Jews are forced to leave Hebron.
(www.zionism-israel.com/Hebron_Massacre1929.htm)
1932 Aug 24, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly nonstop across the United States, traveling from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in just over 19 hours.
1934 Aug 24, In Philadelphia, Pa., Philo T. Farnsworth (28), a San Francisco scientist, produced a televised picture of the moon, the first recorded use of television in astronomy.
1936 Aug 24, FDR gave the FBI authority to pursuit fascists and communists.
1937 Aug 24, Treasure Island in SF Bay was completed after 18½ months. All told 20 million cubic yards of sea bottom had been dredged, dug, dumped and poured inside the rocky walls.
(www.treasureislandfestival.com/island.php)
1937 Aug 24, There was a Republican offensive near Belchite, Spain.
1938 Aug 24, Mason Williams, composer (Classical Gas), writer (Smother Brothers Hour), was born in Abilene, Tx.
1940 Aug 24, Luftwaffe bombed London.
1942 Aug 24, In the battle of the Eastern Solomons, the third carrier-versus-carrier battle of the war, U.S. naval forces defeated a Japanese force attempting to screen reinforcements for the Guadalcanal fighting.
1944 Aug 24, Allied forces captured Bordeaux. Spanish forces entered Paris.
(www.euronet.nl/users/wilfried/ww2/1944.htm)(SFC, 8/16/19, p.A4)
1948 Aug 24, Edith Mae Irby became the University of Arkansas' first African-American student.
1949 Aug 24, Stephen Harrison Paulus, composer, was born in New Jersey.
1949 Aug 24, The North Atlantic Treaty went into effect.
1951 Aug 24, Oscar Hijeulos, novelist, was born. His work included "The Mambo Kings play Songs of Love."
1954 Aug 24, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Communist Control Act, virtually outlawing the Communist Party in the United States.
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)(AP, 8/24/07)
1954 Aug 24, In Brazil Pres. Getulio Vargas killed himself in the midst of a scandal.
(WSJ, 4/6/06, p.D8)(http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=428)
1958 Aug 24, Leo Blech (87), German conductor and composer, died.
1959 Aug 24, Three days after Hawaiian statehood, Hiram L. Fong was sworn in as the first Chinese-American U.S. Senator while Daniel K. Inouye was sworn in as the first Japanese-American U.S. Representative.
1961 Aug 24, Johannes Vorster, a former Nazi leader, became South Africa's minister of justice.
1967 Aug 24, Henry J. Kaiser (85), industrialist (Boulder Dam, Liberty ship), died.
1968 Aug 24, France became the world's fifth thermonuclear power as it exploded a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific.
1970 Aug 24, A bomb planted by anti-war extremists exploded at the University of Wisconsin's Army Math Research Center in Madison, killing 33-year-old researcher Robert Fassnacht. On Sep 2 the FBI began a nationwide hunt for Dwight Armstrong (19), Karleton Armstrong (22), David S. Fine (18), and Leo F. Burt (22). Dwight Armstrong (1951-2010), the last to be caught, was arrested in Toronto in April, 1977.
(AP, 8/24/97)(SSFC, 6/27/10, p.C9)
1974 Aug 24, France performed another nuclear test at Muruora Island.
(www.atomicforum.org/france/1974.html)
1975 Aug 24, Charles H. Revson (b.1906), US cosmetic magnate, died.
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/500688/Charles-H-Revson)
1976 Aug 24, In Buenos Aires a government task force kidnapped Marcelo Gelman (20) and his pregnant wife Maria Claudia Garcia Irureta (19). Marcelo was shot and killed 2 months later and packed in cement in an oil drum. His wife disappeared after giving birth in a military hospital in Uruguay. Juan Gelman, the poet father of Marcelo, later campaigned in search of his grandchild and authored the book "Not Even God's Feeble Pardon." In 2008 the granddaughter of Argentine poet Juan Gelman urged Uruguayan courts to reopen a probe into the 1976 disappearance of her dissident mother, weeks before her grandfather was scheduled to receive the Spanish-speaking world's most prestigious literary prize.
(SFC, 12/9/99, p.A16)(AP, 2/27/08)
1979 Aug 24, The American sitcom "Facts of Life," a spin-off of Diff'rent Strokes, premiered on NBC and continued to May 7, 1988. For the first seven yhears Charlotte Rae (1926-2018) played housemother Mrs. Garret to a brood of teenage girls.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Facts_of_Life_(TV_series))(SFC, 8/9/18, p.D6)
1981 Aug 24, Mark David Chapman (b.1955) was sentenced in New York to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of rock star John Lennon.
(AP, 8/24/97)(www.jfkmontreal.com/john_lennon/app_c_sentencinghearing.htm)
1982 Aug 24, Some 800 US Marines landed in Beirut, Lebanon, as part of a joint US-French peacekeeping force.
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/usmnf.htm)
1987 Aug 24, A military jury in Quantico, Va., sentenced Marine Sgt. Clayton Lonetree to 30 years in prison for disclosing U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union. The sentence was later reduced; with additional time off for good behavior, Lonetree ended up serving eight years in a military prison.
1987 Aug 24, Bayard Rustin (b.1912), gay civil rights activist, died of cardiac arrest. In 2003 a documentary of his life by Nancy Kates: "Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin," was aired on PBS TV. He was the chief architect of the 1963 march on Washington. In 2003 John D'Emilio authored "Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin."
(SFC, 1/16/03, p.E1)(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.M3)
1988 Aug 24, Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis picked up the endorsement of the AFL-CIO while Republican nominee George Bush campaigned in California with President Reagan.
1988 Aug 24, Leonard Frey (b.1938), American actor, died of AIDS. His film roles included "Boys in the Band" (1970) and "Fiddler on the Roof" (1971).
(www.answers.com/topic/leonard-frey)
1988 Aug 24, Max Shulman (b.1919), author (Dobie Gillis, Tender Trap), died.
(www.answers.com/topic/max-shulman)
1989 Aug 24, Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti banned Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose from major league baseball for gambling.
1989 Aug 24, Voyager II passed within three thousand miles of Neptune sending back striking photographs.
(V.D.-H.K.p.388)(AP, 8/24/99)
1989 Aug 24, British brewery Bass bought the Holiday Inn hotel chain.
(www.worldofquotes.com/history/8_24/7/index.html)
1989 Aug 24, Colombian drug lords declared "total war" on the government.
1989 Aug 24, Poland appointed Tadeusz Mazowiecki prime minister, becoming the first country in the Soviet bloc to name a non-communist prime minister since the late 1940s. Krzysztof Skubiszewski (d.2010 at 83) became foreign minister under PM Mazowiecki. Skubiszewski served under three more prime ministers before leaving the job in 1993.
(Reuters, 8/24/01)(AP, 2/8/10)
1990 Aug 24, Iraqi troops surrounded foreign missions in Kuwait.
1990 Aug 24, Irish hostage Brian Keenan was released by his captors in Lebanon after being held more than four years.
1990 Aug 24, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev sent a message to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein warning the Persian Gulf situation was "extremely dangerous."
1991 Aug 24, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev resigned as head of the Communist Party, culminating a stunning Kremlin shakeup that followed the failed coup by hard-liners. In Moscow, thousands of people held a martyrs' funeral for three men killed fighting the coup.
1991 Aug 24, Ukraine declared independence from USSR.
(www.users.bigpond.com/kyroks/ukrhist10.html)
1991 Aug 24, Bernard Castro (b.1904), Sicilian-born inventor of the convertible couch, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Castro)
1992 Aug 24, Hurricane Andrew smashed into Florida causing record damage; 55 deaths in Florida, Louisiana and the Bahamas were blamed on the storm. It swept across Coral Gables, Florida, and destroyed two-thirds of the Fairchild Tropical Garden. It cost $15.5 bil in insured losses and was the most expensive natural disaster in US history. Insurance losses in the US and Bahamas totaled $21.5 billion.
(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)(AP, 8/24/97)(Econ, 8/21/04, p.62)(Econ, 9/17/05, p.73)
1992 Aug 24, China and South Korea established diplomatic ties.
1993 Aug 24, The Clinton administration unveiled its proposed revisions to wetlands policy, which would expand protection but also give landowners some flexibility.
1993 Aug 24, NASA's Mars Observer, which was supposed to map the surface of Mars, was declared lost.
1994 Aug 24, Israeli and PLO negotiators agreed on an accord to give the Palestinians control of health care, taxation, education and other services in West Bank areas still controlled by Israel.
1995 Aug 24, Microsoft Corporation began selling its highly publicized Windows 95 personal computer software. The Windows 95 operating system was priced at $89 for an upgrade.
(WSJ, 4/4/00, p.A16)(AP, 8/24/00)
1995 Aug 24, Harry Wu, Chinese human rights activist and writer, was sentenced to 15 years in prison by Chinese law and then expelled from China. China expelled Harry Wu, hours after convicting him of spying.
(SFC, 5/19/96, Zone 1, p.3)(AP, 8/24/00)
1996 Aug 24, Four women began two days of academic orientation at The Citadel; they were the first female cadets admitted to the South Carolina military school since Shannon Faulkner.
1996 Aug 24, Steve Fossett sailed across the Pacific Ocean and set a solo speed record of 20 days in his 60-foot 3-hulled boat, the Lakota.
1996 Aug 24, In Mozambique crops in the fertile districts of Manica were severely damaged by an invasion of red locusts.
1996 Aug 24, In North Korea American Evan Carl Hunzike was arrested for spying. He entered illegally from China to get information on the domestic situation.
(SFEC, 10/7/96, A8)
1997 Aug 24, Officer Jeremy Charron, 24, was shot and killed Gordon Perry (22) and Kevin Paul (18) in Epsom, New Hampshire. Both captured suspects were on probation. Paul later received a 16- to 50-year prison sentence. Perry was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
(SFC, 8/25/97, p.A8)(www.odmp.org/officer/14959-patrolman-jeremy-t.-charron)
1997 Aug 24, In Cambodia troops of Hun Sen overran O'Smach, the last frontier town held by forces loyal to Prince Ranariddh.
1997 Aug 24, In France Pope John Paul II offered tough challenges and affectionate encouragement to more than 1 million faithful attending Mass during closing World Youth Day ceremonies in Paris.
1997 Aug 24, In Honduras a power outage at a state-run hospital resulted in the death of 14 patients. The Sunday blackout was not reported until Monday.
1997 Aug 24, In Zambia former pres. Kaunda accused Pres. Frederick Chiluba of trying to kill him after he was wounded by riot police during a protest rally.
(WSJ, 8/25/97, p.B5A)
1998 Aug 24, The United States and Britain agreed to allow two Libyan suspects in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 to be tried by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands. A former Libyan intelligence agent was later convicted of murder; the other suspect was acquitted.
1998 Aug 24, A federal court rejected the Census Bureau's plans to use statistical sampling for the 2000 census, a decision later upheld by the Supreme Court.
1998 Aug 24, Tropical Storm Charley dropped a foot of rain on South Texas and northern Mexico and left at least 14 people dead and over 60 missing.
1998 Aug 24, E.G. Marshall, actor, died in Mount Kisco, N.Y, at age 84.
1998 Aug 24, In Burma Aung San Suu Kyi bowed to medical problems and ended her 13-day roadside standoff against the government.
1998 Aug 24, In Congo some 2,000 Angolan troops captured a coastal naval base and oil port and moved up the Congo River to battle the rebels.
1998 Aug 24, In Egypt Abu Nidal was captured after crossing the border from Libya. He had split from the PLO in 1974 and was responsible for terrorist bombings in 1985 at the Rome and Vienna airports and a 1986 hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 as well as a number of assassinations of PLO figures. Egypt denied the report of Nidal's capture.
1998 Aug 24, In Indonesia Lt. Gen'l. Prabowo Subianto, son-in-law of former Pres. Suharto, was discharged. He had been the chief of Kopassus, a special forces unit that was implicated in abductions and torture of political dissidents.
1998 Aug 24, Israel agreed to turn over an additional 13% of the West Bank to the Palestinians.
1998 Aug 24, In Sierra Leone a jury found 16 people, including 5 journalists, guilty of collaborating with the ousted military junta.
1998 Aug 24, It was reported that Salaheldin Idris, a Saudi Arabian banker, planned to sue the US for $50 million for damages to his Ashifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan.
1999 Aug 24, The Federal Reserve raised borrowing costs for millions of Americans, increasing its target for the federal funds rate by a quarter point to 5.25 percent, and hiking the discount rate a quarter point to 4.75 percent.
(SFC, 8/25/99, p.A1)(AP, 8/24/00)
1999 Aug 24, In Ohio a federal judge halted the state's 4-year-old tuition voucher program saying that it violated constitutional mandates for separation of church and state. Officials scrambled to absorb 3,800 students participating in the program. The judge later reversed the decision and allowed some students to use vouchers, but no new participants.
1999 Aug 24, Congo rebel leaders agreed to sign a peace accord.
1999 Aug 24, In Dagestan rebel forces pulled back and Russian forces took control of 5 villages that had been seized 3 weeks earlier.
1999 Aug 24, In Russia Sergei Kiriyenko, Boris Nemtsov and Irina Khakamada formed the Union Right-Wing Forces Block.
1999 Aug 24, In South Africa an estimated 100,000 workers joined marches across the country in a one-day strike for wage increases.
1999 Aug 24, The death toll in Turkey's August 17 earthquake was raised to near 18,000.
2000 Aug 24, Pres. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore met with Pres.-elect Vincente Fox of Mexico. Fox promoted his ideas on an open border a day before he met with Texas Gov. George W. Bush in Dallas.
2000 Aug 24, Ricardo Miguel Cavallo, a suspected torturer from the Argentine "dirty war" (1976-1983), was arrested in Mexico after former political prisoners identified him. Cavallo was extradited to Spain in 2003 and charged with genocide and terrorism.
(SFC, 8/25/00, p.D4)(AP, 6/30/03)
2000 Aug 24, Fighting from Chechnya spilled into Ingushetia and 100 rebels were reported killed by Russian forces.
2000 Aug 24, It was reported that 13 street kids had been killed over the last 7 months in Honduras.
2000 Aug 24, In India it was reported that 49 people were killed following torrential rains in Andhra Pradesh.
2000 Aug 24, India and Pakistan traded accusations over a clash in Kashmir. India claimed that 10 Pakistani fighters were killed, while Pakistan said 2 were killed.
2000 Aug 24, John Kaiser (67), an American priest of the Society of St. Joseph, was found shot to death near Naivasha, Kenya. Kaiser was critical of the government's human rights record. In 2007 a Kenyan court ruled that his death was a homicide.
(SFC, 8/25/00, p.D7)(AP, 8/11/03)(AP, 8/1/07)
2000 Aug 24, In the Philippines police found the bodies of 5 truck drivers kidnapped 2 days earlier in Maguindanao province.
2000 Aug 24, In Russia Pres. Putin raised wage 20% for members of the military, police and security forces effective Dec 1.
2001 Aug 24, President Bush blamed the slumping economy for the shrinking budget surplus, rather than his tax cut, and said it was up to Congress to restrain spending.
2001 Aug 24, Tom Green, a Mormon fundamentalist with five wives and 30 children, was sentenced by a court in Provo, Utah, to five years in prison in the state's biggest polygamy case in nearly half a century.
2001 Aug 24, Bridgestone/Firestone agreed to pay $7.5 million to the family of Marisa Rodriguez, who was paralyzed in a Ford Explorer crash in 2000. Ford settled before the trial for $6 million.
2001 Aug 24, Pope Shenouda III, the 117th successor of St. Mark and head of the 12-million member Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church, was denied access to a site in Marin, Ca., where a new monastery was planned.
2001 Aug 24, Actress Jane Greer died at age 76.
2001 Aug 24, In Angola gunmen fired a missile at a passenger bus near Malanje and sprayed it with gunfire. At least 50 people, including women and children were killed.
2001 Aug 24, Australia's Parkes Observatory picked up an unusual burst of radio waves from the direction of the Small Magellanic Cloud. Astronomers only noticed it in 2007 while poking around the in Parke's archived data. Similar unrepeated "fast radio bursts" (FRBS) were later noted elsewhere.
2001 Aug 24, In Macedonia rebels agreed to hand over some 3,000 weapons. The government had earlier charged that the rebels had 85,000 weapons.
2001 Aug 24, Yugoslavia's Pres. Kostunica accused Serbia's government of failure to tackle rising crime and corruption.
2002 Aug 24, In Oregon City, Ore., the FBI uncovered human remains in an outbuilding behind the house of Ward Weaver III, a suspect in the case of two missing girls who lived across the street. Authorities recovered the remains of Ashley Pond (12) and Miranda Gaddis (13). In 2004 Weaver pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and no contest to other charges of sexual abuse. A plea bargain allowed him to avoid the death penalty and he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison.
(AP, 8/24/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Weaver_III)
2002 Aug 24, It was reported that Algerian elite soldiers, backed by artillery and helicopters, killed 16 suspected Islamist rebels during a week-long operation against guerrillas east of Algiers.
2002 Aug 24, Azerbaijani voters overwhelmingly approved changes to the constitution in a referendum the opposition charged was marred by fraud.
2002 Sep 24-2002 Sep 25, In the Canary Islands over a dozen beaked whales beached themselves following NATO exercises that involved a cluster of warships and submarines. 9 of the whales washed ashore dead and showed lesions in the brain and hearing system, consistent with acoustic impact.
(SFC, 9/26/02, p.A20)(SFC, 10/7/02, p.A6)
2002 Aug 24, Suspected rebels shot dead eight Muslim villagers, including three women, in Indian Kashmir as a U.S. envoy took his peace mission to Islamabad to try to cool tensions on the subcontinent.
2002 Aug 24, A Palestinian militia shot and killed a Palestinian woman suspected of collaborating with Israel, then dumped her bullet-riddled body on a street in the West Bank town of Tulkarem. The next day her son said that Palestinian gunmen tortured him until he invented a story about his mother's involvement.
2003 Aug 24, The US Justice Department reported the crime rate in 2002 was the lowest since studies began in 1973.
2003 Aug 24, Japan's Musashi-Fuchu routed East Boynton Beach, Fla., 10-1 to win the Little League World Series.
2003 Aug 24, It was reported in Nature that a chemical in red wine called resveratrol was able to increase the life a Saccharomyces yeast cell by 80%. A beneficial effect on humans was implied.
(NW, 9/1/03, p.9)
2003 Aug 24, In Oregon 8 firefighters died as their van hit a tractor-trailer while returning from fighting a wildfire in Idaho.
2003 Aug 24, John J. Rhodes Jr. (86), former U.S. House Minority Leader, died in Mesa, Ariz.
2003 Aug 24, Sir Wilfred Thesiger (93), British writer, explorer and chronicler of the world's vanishing ways of life, died. Thesiger's most famous books were "Arabian Sands," about his travels with the Bedu people across the Empty Quarter of southern Arabia in the 1940s, and "The Marsh Arabs," the story of the Shiite marsh dwellers of southern Iraq. In 2006 Alexander Maitland authored "Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of the Great Explorer."
2003 Aug 24, Public power went out in Kabul, Afghanistan, due to lack of water in the local reservoirs. Return of power was not expected until Dec.
2003 Aug 24, In central Colombia a rebel bomb exploded as passengers were disembarking from a boat, killing six people, including the woman carrying the device.
2003 Aug 24, A 150-strong US Marine force ended an 11-day deployment and headed back to warships off the coast of Monrovia, Liberia.
2003 Aug 24, A twin-engine turboprop Let L-410 crashed in Haiti and 21 people were killed.
2003 Aug 24, Hurricane Ignacio sideswiped the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula.
2003 Aug 24, Palestinian militants carried out their deepest rocket strike against Israel. A Qassam-2 rocket, a makeshift weapon produced by the militant Islamic group Hamas, landed near a lifeguard station on Zikim beach with no damages or casualties. Israeli missile fire killed 4 Palestinian militants in Gaza City.
2003 Aug 24, In northern Turkey a bus in a wedding convoy veered off the road and slammed into a retaining wall, killing 19 people and injuring several others.
2004 Aug 24, An independent commission said the blame for abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison lay mainly with the American soldiers who ran the jail, but said senior commanders and top-level Pentagon officials could also be faulted for failed leadership and oversight.
2004 Aug 24, Osama bin Laden's chauffeur was arraigned at first U.S. military commission hearing since World War II.
2004 Aug 24, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (78), a psychiatrist who revolutionized the way the world looks at terminally ill patients and later as a pioneer for hospice care, died in Scottsdale, Arizona. Her book "On Death and Dying" (1969) identified five stages of grief. Her last book, co-written with David Kessler, "On Grief and Grieving" was released in July 2005.
(AP, 8/25/04)(Econ, 9/4/04, p.81)(http://www.elisabethkublerross.com/)
2004 Aug 24, China evacuated hundreds of thousands of people as Typhoon Aere lashed neighboring Taiwan, triggering landslides and disruption and leaving at least seven people feared dead and one missing.
2004 Aug 24, Hong Kong announced the official end to nearly 6 years of deflation.
2004 Aug 24, In India a 4-day strike by truckers over a new tax paralyzed the movement of goods. Employees of state-owned banks launched a strike over pay.
2004 Aug 24, In Iraq a car bomb killed at least 2 people in Baghdad. In Najaf US forces intensified fighting against rebels loyal to al-Sadr.
2004 Aug 24, Nepalese rebels lifted a weeklong blockade that cut off Katmandu from the rest of the nation.
2004 Aug 24, The Nigerian Senate ordered Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell to pay 1.5 billion dollars (1.2 billion euros) compensation for damages caused by nearly 60 years of exploration in the Niger Delta.
2004 Aug 24, The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was mounting a major airlift of relief supplies to Sudan's troubled Darfur region.
2004 Aug 24, A Russian airliner crashed and a second disappeared from radar about the same time night after both planes took off from the same Moscow airport, raising fears that terrorism was involved. A distress signal was activated on the second plane. All 89 passengers and crew were killed, 46 aboard a TU-154 and 43 aboard a TU-134.
2004 Aug 24, In South Africa Mark Thatcher, the son of former British PM Margaret Thatcher, was arrested and charged with helping to finance a foiled coup attempt in oil rich Equatorial Guinea. Thatcher was later fined three million rand (approximately $500,000) and received a four-year suspended jail sentence. In 2008 Equatorial Guinea issued an international arrest warrant against Mark Thatcher, accusing him of being an instigator of the abortive coup plot.
(AP, 8/25/04)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Thatcher)(FP, 3/29/08)
2005 Aug 24, US military said the Pentagon has ordered 1,500 additional troops to Iraq to provide security in advance of two upcoming votes.
2005 Aug 24, A federal commission voted against closing the New London submarine base in Groton, Conn., and the Portsmouth shipyard in Kittery, Maine.
2005 Aug 24, Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson apologized for calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
2005 Aug 24, Hawaii planned caps on rising gas prices effective Sep 1.
2005 Aug 24, The New York Times reported that officials in nine northeastern US states have reached a preliminary agreement to freeze power plant emissions at their current levels and then reduce them by 10 percent by 2020.
2005 Aug 24, Tropical Depression 12 strengthened into Tropical Storm Katrina over the central Bahamas; a hurricane warning was issued for the southeastern Florida coast.
2005 Aug 24, In Dublin, Ga., a girl shot, killed and robbed Fredrick Williams (25) and Reante Stanley (26) after they had given her and a 14-year-old friend a ride to a motel. The girls stole about $200 from the men. Lakeisha Davis (15) of Dublin was charged with murder and armed robbery. The 14-year-old, who was not immediately identified, was tried in juvenile court on a charge of theft. In 2008 Davis was sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 8/26/05, p.A3)(www.prisontalk.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-143798.html)
2005 Aug 24, In Afghanistan's Uruzgan province coalition aircraft killed 5 alleged insurgents after a firefight with troops on the ground.
2005 Aug 24, The US-led coalition and Afghan forces killed Payenda Mohammed, a suspected Taliban commander and three of his fighters in the country's south.
2005 Aug 24, Strong thunderstorms rolled through Argentina and Uruguay, slowing air traffic, felling trees and leaving at least eight people dead.
2005 Aug 24, Brazilian police arrested Francisco Antonio Cadena Collazzos, a Colombian man accused of being an unofficial ambassador for Colombia's largest rebel group.
2005 Aug 24, Brazilian officials said an 80-year-old woman filmed drug traffickers near her Copacabana beach apartment for two years and delivered 22 films to police, triggering a massive raid against a slum drug gang. Police arrested 15 suspected traffickers, including two Rio de Janeiro state police officers.
2005 Aug 24, Jack Slipper (81), Scotland Yard detective, died. He pursued one of the fugitives from Britain's "Great Train Robbery" across many years and two continents.
2005 Aug 24, Chinese share prices surged after the government issued new market guidelines and pledged to push ahead with shareholding reforms.
2005 Aug 24, In southern China a bus swerved to avoid an oncoming bicycle and veered onto a roadside crowded with pedestrians in Shenzhen, killing 19 people and injuring 16.
2005 Aug 24, In northwest Colombia suspected leftist guerrillas killed at least 14 peasant farmers who were cultivating coca near Puerto Valdivia.
2005 Aug 24, Government officials from Ecuador and Venezuela singed a preliminary agreement by which Venezuela would lend Ecuador a million barrels of crude oil between September and October. A loan of naphtha and diesel was also part of the deal.
2005 Aug 24, Egyptian security forces besieging parts of rugged northern Sinai clashed with gunmen and arrested 26 people during a massive search for suspects linked to the recent attacks in the peninsula.
2005 Aug 24, Israel and Egypt reached an agreement to have 750 Egyptian troops take control of a volatile Egypt-Gaza border area from Israeli forces.
2005 Aug 24, A Hong Kong judge ruled that laws against gay sex, including one that demands a life sentence for men under 21 who engage in sodomy, are unconstitutional and discriminatory.
2005 Aug 24, Officials in India said the death toll from an outbreak of encephalitis in Uttar Pradesh has increased to 178, with more than 60 deaths reported in the past five days.
2005 Aug 24, Sunni insurgents killed 13 people in a series of raids in Baghdad. Sadr fighters attacked pro-government Badr militia and fighting raged in 5 cities.
2005 Aug 24, Rumors of a coup in Myanmar's ruling military junta weakened the Southeast Asian nation's currency and boosted the price of gold in local trading.
2005 Aug 24, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that the Israeli Army is expected to leave the Gaza Strip by Oct. 4 at the latest.
2005 Aug 24, Jailed Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky lashed out at the Kremlin and announced a hunger strike to support his business partner, Platon Lebedev, who was moved into an isolation cell on Aug 19.
2005 Aug 24, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria said it has suspended grants to Uganda based on evidence of serious financial mismanagement.
2005 Aug 24, Venezuela condemned American religious broadcaster Pat Robertson for suggesting President Hugo Chavez should be killed, saying he committed a crime that is punishable in the United States.
2005 Aug 24, In Vietnam a man died of bird flu in Hanoi raising the regional toll to 62.
(WSJ, 9/1/05, p.A13)
2006 Aug 24, A US House report said 70% of contracts for Hurricane Katrina were let with little or no competition. 4 Katrina contractors were indicted for taking $700,000 for no work.
2006 Aug 24, The US FDA approved Plan B, also called the morning after pill, for sale without prescription to women 18 and older.
2006 Aug 24, In Oakland, Ca., police moved to serve 65 arrest warrants and picked up 30 suspected drug dealers. They planned to continue their sweep.
2006 Aug 24, A Kentucky judge dropped charges against Gov. Fletcher in a plea deal in which Fletcher acknowledged failure to follow the state's merit-hiring rules.
2006 Aug 24, In Essex, Vermont, Christopher Williams (26) shot and killed 2 people after breaking up with his girlfriend, and then shot himself in the head. Williams killed Andrea Lambesis (57), the mother of his girlfriend at her home. He then went to Essex Elementary School where he killed teacher Mary Shanks (56) and wounded 2 others.
2006 Aug 24, Deadly storms swept across the northern Plains, bringing tornadoes that ripped roofs off houses and hail that smashed car windshields. One man was killed when a tornado hit his home in Minnesota, and in Wisconsin, lightning apparently killed a dozen cows and struck a woman as she left a supermarket.
2006 Aug 24, Carl C. Clark (82), US auto safety and air-bag pioneer, died.
2006 Aug 24, Arthur Schiff (b.1940), TV-advertising pitchman, died. His pitched products included a kitchen knife, which he renamed Ginsu, made in Ohio. "But wait, there's more."
(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.A4)
2006 Aug 24, Ralph Schoenstein (73), American humorist, writer and NPR commentator, died in Philadelphia. His 18 books included "Fatherhood" (1987), ghost written for Bill Cosby.
2006 Aug 24, Leading astronomers meeting in Prague declared that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.
2006 Aug 24, American and Afghan forces killed seven suspected al-Qaida operatives after coming under fire during a raid in eastern Afghanistan. Police, however, claimed those killed were members of two families trying to resolve a dispute.
2006 Aug 24, A Bangladesh court acquitted former military ruler Hossain Mohammad Ershad of graft charges in an oil and defense deal, easing the way for his return to the political mainstream ahead of elections next year.
2006 Aug 24, An explosion in Chechnya's capital Grozny killed four people.
2006 Aug 24, In China a blind activist who was arrested after recording complaints of forced abortions was sentenced to four years and three months in prison. Chen Guangcheng was convicted of damaging property and "organizing a mob to disturb traffic" after a trial in the eastern province of Shandong.
2006 Aug 24, China reported that a chemical spill on the Mangniu River in Jilin province was contained. A 3-mile slick had been created by a xylidine spill from a local chemical company.
2006 Aug 24, A Danish prosecutor charged four young Muslims with helping to supply weapons and explosives for a planned terror attack in Europe. The four men, arrested in Denmark last October 27, helped the two main suspects in Bosnia get hold of weapons and explosives with the aim of committing a terror act.
2006 Aug 24, France said it was ready to send an extra 1,600 troops to bolster a revamped U.N. force for Lebanon, bringing the total French contingent to 2,000 and making it easier to recruit other nations.
2006 Aug 24, Murat Kurnaz (b.1982), a German native, was released after spending more than 4 years locked up at Guantanamo Bay. He had been arrested in Pakistan in late 2001. In 2007 he and Helmut Kuhn authored "Fünf Jahre meines Lebens: Ein Bericht aus Guantanamo" (Five years of My Life: A Report from Guantanamo).
(Econ, 2/3/07, p.53)(http://tinyurl.com/36pdk5)(Econ, 6/9/07, p.97)
2006 Aug 24, In Iraq gunmen overnight killed at least three people. A US soldiers was killed south of Baghdad. 3 car bombs in Baghdad and a series of bombings and shootings across the country killed 16 Iraqis and two US soldiers. Police found four handcuffed bodies dumped separately in the streets of Kut.
2006 Aug 24, Israeli forces crossed into the Gaza Strip in a raid that captured a local Hamas militant leader and left his brother dead near a Gaza border town.
2006 Aug 24, Jihad Hamad (20), the second main suspect in a failed plot to bomb two German trains, was arrested in his native Lebanon after surrendering to police.
2006 Aug 24, Nigeria released 10,000 prisoners incarcerated for up to 10 years without trial. (WSJ, 8/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 24, South Africa's cabinet gave the green light for a bill allowing gay marriage, which would make it the first country in Africa to accord homosexual couples the same rights as their straight counterparts.
2007 Aug 24, A US federal appeals court revived California's request for at least $1 billion in refunds for electricity customers due to overcharges during the Enron debacle.
2007 Aug 24, In California Gov. Schwarzenegger signed the overdue state budget after cutting $703 million in exchange for the support of Senate Republicans. Line-item cuts included $527 million in health and human services, $70 million in raises to state workers and $39 million in prison funding.
2007 Aug 24, A judge in Inverness, Fla., sentenced John Evander Couey to death for kidnapping 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in 2005, raping her and burying her alive.
2007 Aug 24, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick admitted he participated in an illegal dogfighting operation and was suspended indefinitely by the National Football League.
2007 Aug 24, In Mississippi Klansman James Ford Seale (71) was sentenced to 3 life terms in prison for his role in the 1964 deaths of Charles Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee.
2007 Aug 24, In Afghanistan insurgents attacked a police patrol in eastern Paktika province, sparking a gunbattle that killed six militants and one officer.
2007 Aug 24, In Canada 11 people were hurt and two killed after a hot air balloon caught fire as it left for a sunset flight in British Columbia. A pickup truck driven by an elderly man struck a pre-wedding party near Vancouver, killing six people and injuring 17.
2007 Aug 24, In China Meng Xianchen and Meng Xianyou surfaced after more than 130 hours trapped in an illegal mine in Beijing's Fangshan district.
2007 Aug 24, Georgia said it fired on a Russian plane flying over its territory. The Tbilisi City Court, behind closed doors, convicted 13 people from minor opposition parties for plotting a violent overthrow of the government. Maia Topuria, the lead defendant and head of the pro-Moscow Justice party, was sentenced to 8 ½ years in prison.
(WSJ, 8/25/07, p.A1)(www.geotimes.ge/index.php?m=home&newsid=6353)
2007 Aug 24, Major wildfires broke out in Greece, burning half a million acres and claiming 65 lives in 11 days.
2007 Aug 24, A car bomb exploded in northern Baghdad, killing seven passers-by and wounding dozens of others in an apparent sectarian attack near the capital's most important Shiite shrine. US and Iraqi forces killed two insurgents and arrested seven others during raids on two villages along the road linking Baghdad with the northern oil city of Kirkuk. Iraqi security forces killed a man suspected of links to the Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaida front group. Ten other al-Qaida suspects were arrested in the raid northeast of Baghdad. US helicopters blasted rooftops in a Shiite neighborhood of north Baghdad in a gunfight that left 8 Shiite gunmen dead. Iraqi police and hospital officials said the dead included a woman and a young boy. Sixteen other people were wounded, including four women and three boys in their early teens who had been sleeping on the roofs to escape the summer heat. One US soldier was killed in an explosion in Salahuddin province.
2007 Aug 24, In Jordan former Iraqi President Abdel-Rahman Aref (91), overthrown more than 35 years ago in a coup that brought Saddam Hussein's Baath party to power, died in Amman.
2007 Aug 24, A deal was reached with Islamic extremists holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon to allow their families to leave the besieged area. The UN Security Council voted unanimously to keep peacekeepers in Lebanon for another 12 months.
2007 Aug 24, Mozambique's health minister said large amounts of drugs, which have been imported into Mozambique with the aid of the international community, end up being sold on the black market at home and abroad.
2007 Aug 24, Myanmar's military junta moved swiftly to crush the latest in a series of protests against fuel price hikes, arresting more than 10 activists in front of Yangon City Hall before they could launch any action.
2007 Aug 24, In Pakistan six soldiers were killed in a suicide attack and roadside bombing near Miran Shah. Hours later the army said a month of fierce fighting near the Afghan border has killed about 250 militants and 60 Pakistani troops. Pro-Taliban militants kidnapped an army officer, two guards and a government official near an army base. A Pakistani army helicopter had fired on a vehicle near Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region, killing three suspected militants. A villager said the slain men were not militants.
2007 Aug 24, Hamas security agents clashed with supporters of the rival Fatah movement, firing into the air and beating journalists covering a demonstration against the Islamic militant group's rule in the Gaza Strip.
2007 Aug 24, Russia issued an international warrant for the arrest of Mikhail Gutseriyev, two days after the death in Moscow of his 21-year-old son. Chingiskhan Gutseriyev died in his sleep after a minor car accident, raising suspicions that he was killed to send a message to his father. On Sep 5 a court upheld a warrant for his arrest and refused to lift a freeze on the shares of his company, Russneft. The freeze has blocked a sale that would have handed him an estimated $3 billion.
2007 Aug 24, In Somalia gunmen shot and killed Abdulkadir Moallim Kaskey, a Somali radio journalist, in southwestern Gedo province.
2007 Aug 24, In Spain a van loaded with explosives blew up outside a police station in the Basque city of Durango, slightly injuring two officers in what appeared to be the first major attack by the separatist group ETA since it called off a cease-fire in June.
2007 Aug 24, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul failed to win enough votes in the second round of a presidential election, but is expected to clinch the post next week. A clash between troops and Kurdish rebels near Turkey's southeast border with Iraq left 10 rebels and two soldiers dead.
2008 Aug 24, The US Democratic national convention's credentials committee ruled to give full voting rights to delegates from Michigan and Florida, despite their defying party rules and holding their primaries early.
2008 Aug 24, In New Mexico 8 inmates escaped from a county jail in Clovis. 3 were captured the next day and 5 remained at large.
2008 Aug 24, Taliban militants attacked a patrol of US-led coalition troops in northern Afghanistan, while insurgents came under fire by NATO aircraft after attacking an Afghan army outpost in the south. At least 10 militants were killed in the fighting. In eastern Kunar province, a civilian Mi-8 supply helicopter contracted by NATO-led troops crashed shortly after takeoff, killing one person on board and wounding three others.
2008 Aug 24, Algerian security forces killed 10 Islamist rebels in a security operation southwest of the capital.
2008 Aug 24, In Bolivia a truck plunged off a cliff high in the Andes killing 21 people with 53 left injured.
2008 Aug 24, In London some 40,000 people, including record-breaking swimmer Michael Phelps, gathered to celebrate 2012 host London taking over from Beijing as the Olympic city.
2008 Aug 24, The Beijing Olympics, played out against a background of political intrigue and featuring 16 days of compelling and controversial action, drew to a spectacular close. China's haul of 51 gold medals was the largest since the Soviet Union won 55 in Seoul in 1988. The US won 36 gold medals and Russia came in 3rd with 23. Jamaica ended up with 11 medals including 6 gold. Cuba took home 24 medals, but only 2 gold.
2008 Aug 24, Kenya took home 14 medals from the Beijing Olympics, 5 of them gold.
(Econ, 9/6/08, p.55)
2008 Aug 24, A wall of snow in the Mont Blanc range of the French Alps buried 3 Swiss and 5 Austrian climbers.
2008 Aug 24, In Guatemala a Cessna Caravan carrying humanitarian workers crashed about 60 miles east of Guatemala City killing 10 people, including five Americans. At least 2 people survived. The plane was headed to a village in the area of El Estor to build homes for CHOICE Humanitarian, a group based in West Jordan, Utah.
2008 Aug 24, The USS McFaul, a US Navy warship carrying humanitarian aid, anchored at the Georgian port of Batumi, sending a strong signal of support to an embattled ally as Russian forces built up around two separatist regions. In central Georgia, an oil train exploded and caught fire, sending plumes of black smoke into the air. A Georgian official said the train hit a land mine and blamed the explosion on departing Russian forces.
2008 Aug 24, In India about 40,000 protesters surrounded the Tata Motors factory slated to produce the Nano, the world's cheapest car, alleging land for the site was forcibly taken from local farmers. A day earlier Ratan Tata, whose Tata Motors is India's top vehicle-maker, warned he would move the plant out of the state if the demonstrations kept up, although his company has already invested 350 million dollars in the project.
2008 Aug 24, In India Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, a hard-line Hindu leader, was killed in the eastern state of Orissa. His death triggered violence between Hindus and Christians that left dozens dead. Right-wing Hindu groups blamed Christians for killing, but a month later Maoist rebels say they had murdered the Hindu leader.
2008 Aug 24, Iran's official news agency said the country has begun designing its second light-water nuclear power plant, a 360-megawatt facility in the southwest.
2008 Aug 24, In Baghdad, back-to-back roadside bombs targeting a police patrol killed three Iraqi civilians and wounded 20, including six police officers. A bomb in a pile of hay killed 3 farmers southeast of Baghdad. Three separate attacks in Diyala province killed 9 people. A suicide bomber struck west of Baghdad, killing at least 25 people. Raina, a teenage Iraqi girl (b.1993) wearing a vest packed with explosives, was captured on video as she turned herself in rather than go through with a suicide bombing in Baquba. The US military announced the arrest of Salim Abdallah Ashur Shujayri (aka Abu Uthman), a Baghdad leader of al-Qaida in Iraq believed to have planned the 2006 abduction of US journalist Jill Carroll.
(AP, 8/24/08)(Reuters, 8/25/08)(SFC, 8/25/08, p.A8)(SFC, 8/26/08, p.A3)
2008 Aug 24, In Kashmir soldiers and police fired at Muslim protesters demanding an end to Indian rule killing one person, as authorities arrested top separatist leaders in a bid to quash unrest that has left at least 37 people dead since June.
2008 Aug 24, In Kyrgyzstan a Boeing 737 passenger jet carrying 90 people to Iran crashed near Bishkek's Manas Int'l. Airport. At least 65 people were killed.
2008 Aug 24, In Niger dozens of land mines accidentally exploded during a ceremony in which a group of former rebels were handing over arms, killing one person and wounding about 40 including the regional governor.
2008 Aug 24, The "Benue", a Nigerian ship with eight crew members, was hijacked. It was owned by service and repair firm West African Offshore Ltd (WAO).
2008 Aug 24, Pakistan rejected a ceasefire offered by Taliban militants in the tribal belt near the Afghan border as troops in the last 24 hours killed seven rebel fighters. Officials said that Taliban militants in the area had slit the throat of a 35-year-old man after accusing him of spying for US troops across the border in Afghanistan.
2008 Aug 24, In Somalia the Shabab, the former military wing of the Islamic courts, and local clan factions took control of the southern port of Kismayo. Muktar Robow, a Shabab commander, wanted to merge with al-Qaeda.
2008 Aug 24, In Sri Lanka soldiers reportedly killed 12 Tamil separatists in fighting along the front lines dividing government territory from the rebels de facto state.
2009 Aug 24, A senior administration said that Pres. Obama has approved establishment of the new unit, to be known as the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, which will be overseen by the National Security Council.
2009 Aug 24, The US government cash for clunkers program ended.
2009 Aug 24, Reader's Digest, founded in 1922, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company piled on debt following a $1.6 billion leveraged buyout in 2007 by investors led by Ripplewood Holdings LLC, a NY private equity firm.
2009 Aug 24, In the San Francisco Bay Area Alexander Robert Youshock (17), a former Hillsdale High School student in San Mateo, lit 2 of 10 pipe bombs before he was tackled by teachers. Youshock also carried a chain saw and a sword and planned to attack students as they ran from the bombs.
2009 Aug 24, Mohammed Jawad (~21), a Guantanamo prisoner once charged with wounding two US soldiers and their interpreter was back home in Afghanistan, months after a war crimes case against him unraveled when a military judge ruled his confession was coerced.
2009 Aug 24, Argentine federal police uncovered four tons (4,200 kilograms) of ephedrine worth millions in oil drums and boxes to be sent to Mexico and the US. The lead investigator called it the largest illegal shipment of the methamphetamine precursor ever seized there.
2009 Aug 24, Bangladesh awarded three offshore blocks to two global energy companies to explore for gas in the Bay of Bengal. The US-based ConocoPhillips and Ireland's Tullow Oil could start exploration work by early next year.
2009 Aug 24, In China 14 workers were killed in a gas explosion at a coal mine in northern Shanxi province.
2009 Aug 24, In Honduras foreign ministers from seven OAS nations launched a direct, high-profile attempt to persuade the interim government to restore ousted Pres. Manuel Zelaya. The delegation failed to win a pledge to restore ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
2009 Aug 24, In Iran conservative rivals handed a new snub to Pres. Ahmadinejad, appointing Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, the man he fired from the post of intelligence minister, as the country's state prosecutor. Senior opposition figure Mahdi Karroubi made public an account of a prisoner who was raped by jailers. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the closure of Kahrizak prison, where at least 3 prisoners are known to have died.
2009 Aug 24, Iraqi lawmakers said major Shiite groups have formed a new alliance that will exclude Iraqi PM al-Maliki, a step likely to stoke fears of increasing Iranian influence and shake up the political landscape before January parliamentary elections. The new bloc, called the Iraqi National Alliance, will include the largest Shiite party, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, or SIIC, and anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc, which both have close ties to Tehran, as well as some small Sunni and secular parties.
2009 Aug 24, Israeli soldiers fired on a group of suspicious Palestinians across the border in northern Gaza. 3 Palestinians were wounded. 2 mortar shells were later fired from Gaza slightly wounding one soldier.
2009 Aug 24, Kenya began its first national census in a decade amid an outcry over one question that asks people to identify their ethnic group, a contentious issue in this East African nation. Kenya's 2009 census put the population at about 39 million.
(AP, 8/24/09)(Econ, 10/30/10, p.45)
2009 Aug 24, An American UN peacekeeper under investigation for sexual exploitation and abuse of minors in Liberia was found dead in his house in Monrovia. Sources said it appeared that the American, a civilian in the Liberia mission, known as UNMIL, had committed suicide due to the investigations.
2009 Aug 24, Mexican police in the northern state of Sinaloa found four severed human heads in a cooler by the side of a rural roadway.
2009 Aug 24, Myanmar police seized more than 100 blocks of heroin and nearly 3 million methamphetamine tablets near the border with Thailand in one of the military-ruled country's largest drug seizures.
2009 Aug 24, Nigeria's anti-graft agency EFCC declared two sacked bank directors wanted over alleged frauds and running their institutions into insolvency.
2009 Aug 24, In the eastern Pakistani city of Sargodha, police arrested six militants in two raids. They were said to be linked to Mehsud's Taliban and had planned to launch strikes next week on at least two places of worship. Among the six was Zaid Mustafa, said to have recruited potential suicide bombers for training in Afghanistan and who is suspected of providing logistics, explosives and other support for terror attacks in Lahore, Karachi or Rawalpindi. Gunmen shot dead an Afghan television journalist and severely wounded his colleague in northwestern Pakistan.
2009 Aug 24, It was reported that Peruvian police expecting to find a shipment of cocaine hidden in a crate holding two live turkeys were surprised to discover the drug surgically implanted inside the birds.
2009 Aug 24, In Rustenberg, South Africa some 13,000 platinum miners at Impala Platinum, the world's second-largest producer, downed tools over a pay dispute.
2009 Aug 24, The Stockholm District Court threatened to fine Internet provider Black Internet 500,000 Swedish kronor (about $70,000) unless it stopped serving Pirate Bay. Court documents showed the company has to comply with the order until the ongoing case between Pirate Bay and the entertainment industry is over.
2009 Aug 24, Taiwan's government confirmed that 292 people were killed and 385 missing after Typhoon Morakot struck the island and caused its worst flooding in half a century earlier this month.
2010 Aug 24, Attorneys general in 17 US states demanded in a joint letter that SF-based Craigslist remove its adult services section because the website cannot adequately block potentially illegal ads promoting prostitution and child trafficking.
2010 Aug 24, In SF the temperature hit a record 98 degrees. Records were broken across much of northern California.
2010 Aug 24, Scientists reported that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has revealed a previously unknown type of oil-eating bacteria, which is suddenly flourishing. The dominant microbe in a studied deep water oil plume is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales.
2010 Aug 24, Scientists said they've identified a sun-like star with as many as seven different planets — including one that might be the smallest ever found outside the solar system. If confirmed, the planetary system around HD 10180, a star more than 100 light years distant, would be the richest ever discovered.
2010 Aug 24, In Eastport, Maine, the Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC) launched a $2.5 million prototype, tidal grid-compatible power system.
(Econ, 10/9/10, p.48)(www.oceanrenewablepower.com/home.htm)
2010 Aug 24, In Afghan heavy fighting overnight was reported in the southwestern provinces of Nimroz and Uruzgan, adjoining the insurgent strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces. Numerous Taliban were reported killed. NATO said Afghan and international forces have killed an estimated 40 Taliban fighters east of Kabul as part of operations to provide security ahead of parliamentary elections next month. Two coalition servicemen, including one American, were reported killed in fighting in the south where the insurgency is most heavily entrenched.
2010 Aug 24, Authorities in Bahrain arrested a suspect in the case of Canadian singer Fatima Kama (28), whose body was found stuffed inside a suitcase at London's Heathrow Airport on Jul 17, 1999. The body was found when a member of the public spotted a black suitcase abandoned on the third floor of a Heathrow Airport parking lot.
2010 Aug 24, British Columbia signed an agreement that will see Canada's westernmost province share tax revenue from the mining industry with aboriginal groups, the first such deal in the mineral-rich region.
2010 Aug 24, In China Zheng Shaodong, an assistant public security minister who led the country's economic crimes investigation unit, was given a suspended death sentence for taking more than $1 million in bribes and abusing his position.
2010 Aug 24, A massive traffic jam in north China stretched for dozens of miles and hit its 10-day mark. It reportedly stemmed from road construction in Beijing that won't be finished until the middle of next month.
2010 Aug 24, In China a Henan passenger plane with 91 passengers and crew overshot a runway in northeastern Hichun city. 43 people were killed and 53 injured.
2010 Aug 24, Researchers in Japan reported the creation of a highly accurate sensor that can detect smells and gases using genetically engineered frog eggs.
2010 Aug 24, A Kenyan official said wildlife officers have seized two tons of elephant ivory and five rhino horns at the main airport that were to be illegally shipped to Malaysia.
2010 Aug 24, In Lebanon 3 Hezbollah members and a follower of the conservative Sunni al-Ahbash group were killed in the residential Bourj Abu Haider district, just outside Beirut's downtown, in running battles with fighters wielding assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The most serious fighting in Beirut since 2008 appears to have been touched off by a traffic dispute that escalated into deadly, hours-long street battles.
2010 Aug 24, Mexican marines found the dumped bodies of 72 people at a ranch in northern Mexico following a shootout with suspected drug cartel gunmen that left one marine and three suspects dead. Two migrants survived the massacre and provided information in the investigation. 77 people were later said to be in the group and that a 3rd migrant had survived with 2 still missing. The dismembered bodies of 2 men were found hung from a bridge at the entrance to Chilpancingo, near Acapulco. DNA evidence later identified Wilmer Nunez as one of the 72 dead.
(AP, 8/25/10)(SFC, 8/25/10, p.A2)(AP, 9/1/10)(AP, 9/5/10)(SFC, 12/5/18, p.A3)
2010 Aug 24, In Nepal an Agni Air plane heading to the Mount Everest region crashed in heavy rain outside Katmandu, killing all 14 people aboard, including 4 Americans, a Briton and a Japanese national.
2010 Aug 24, In Nigeria gunmen ambushed Soboma George, leader of the feared Outlaws Gang, in the oil town of Port Harcourt. The gunmen fired at George, and killed one woman and wounded another during a running shootout. George's body was recovered Aug 27.
2010 Aug 24, Senegal's PM Souleymane Ndene Ndiaye said that those begging for money will be given a place to stay if they leave the streets of Dakar and other large cities to receive help from charities. The government soon began enforcing a 2005 ban on begging. Officials said they recently felt pressure to impose the law because the US and other donor countries had threatened to cut off aid if Senegal does not address human trafficking. Aid groups and human rights organizations estimated that as many as 100,000 children in Senegal, population 13.7 million, are forced to beg every day by religious teachers known as marabouts. Caught in the dragnet were handicapped adults who used to line their wheelchairs along a stretch of the boulevard leading to the presidential palace in downtown Dakar.
(AP, 9/5/10)(http://tinyurl.com/236esgh)
2010 Aug 24, In Somalia a suicide bomber and gunmen wearing military uniforms attacked a hotel near the presidential palace in Mogadishu, sparking a one-hour gun battle with security forces. At least 32 people were killed, including six Somali parliamentarians. Al-Shabab claimed responsibility.
(AP, 8/24/10)(AP, 10/6/11)
2010 Aug 24, The UN said some 80,000 people have been cut off by floods in Pakistan and that it needs at least 40 more helicopters to ferry aid to increasingly desperate people.
2010 Aug 24, In Vietnam at least 9 people were killed when Typhoon Mindulle struck the central coast.
(AFP, 10/17/10)(http://tinyurl.com/25z8plq)
2011 Aug 24, Philip Baker (46), former managing director of the collapsed Chicago hedge fund Lake Shore Asset Management Ltd, pleaded guilty for his role in what prosecutors called a $291.8 million worldwide fraud. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission won a court order in August 2007 freezing Lake Shore's assets and a receiver was appointed that October. More than $100 million has been returned to investors so far.
2011 Aug 24, Silicon Valley legend Steve Jobs resigned as chief executive of Apple Inc in a stunning move that ended his 14-year reign at the technology giant he co-founded in a garage.
2011 Aug 24, Astrophysicist Peter Nugent of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory discovered a supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy, a neighbor of the Milky Way. The event dating back 21 million years was identified as a type 1a supernova and named SN2011FE.
(SFC, 9/5/11, p.A7)
2011 Aug 24, In southern Afghanistan a NATO service member was killed in an insurgent attack. Four rockets fell in Zurmat district of Paktia province. One rocket hit a vegetable market and killed three civilians and wounded eight others.
2011 Aug 24, In eastern Australia an overnight house fire killed 11 people, including eight children, from two families in Logan City, Queensland state.
2011 Aug 24, Hurricane Irene roared across the Bahamas archipelago, pummeling the country's smaller, less-populated islands. Property damage appeared likely to be extensive on Acklins and Crooked islands, in the southern part of the chain. PM Hubert Ingraham said the country was bracing for extensive damage to buildings and infrastructure.
2011 Aug 24, El Salvador's Supreme Court refused to order the detention of nine former military officers indicted in Spain for the 1989 slayings of six Jesuit priests during the Central American country's 1980-1992 civil war. Another ex-Salvadoran military officer charged in the case was freed on bail while facing an immigration charge in Boston.
2011 Aug 24, Greece's parliament approved new legislation to reform its universities.
2011 Aug 24, Indian lawmakers agreed after frantic talks to discuss a stringent anti-corruption law proposed by a reform activist whose eight-day fast demanding the legislation has drawn burgeoning support and tested the scandal-tainted government. Anna Hazare's fast has drawn tens of thousands of supporters to a round-the-clock protest rally in the heart of the capital. Four lawmakers were charged for their role in an alleged cash-for-votes scandal during a crucial confidence vote the ruling Congress party faced in 2008.
2011 Aug 24, Across Iraq 12 people, among them six policemen, were killed and 14 others wounded in a series of attacks.
2011 Aug 24, Israeli aircraft killed a militant from Gaza's Islamic Jihad faction before dawn. They later targeted two militants who had fired two mortars at Israel shortly before. Israeli air strikes on Gaza killed 4 people Palestinians including 2 Islamic Jihad militants.
2011 Aug 24, Japan's government unveiled a $100 billion loans program to ease the strains of a strong yen and encourage companies to turn adversity into opportunity.
2011 Aug 24, In Libya pro-regime snipers cut off the road to Tripoli's airport, fired at motorists near the capital's port and launched repeated attacks on Moammar Gadhafi's government compound, stormed by thousands of rebels a day earlier. Dozens of foreign journalists were released at the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli. Rebels offered a $2 million bounty for Gadhafi.
2011 Aug 24, Mexican officials said that civil, tax and administrative cases will be processed through a state website. Officials expected everything from filings to rulings to be done electronically.
2011 Aug 24, In Mexico gunmen attacked a group of parents waiting for their children outside an elementary school, killing one man and wounding five other people in a dangerous part of the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
2011 Aug 24, Nepal's Pres. Rambaran Yadav ordered parliament to vote for a new prime minister after the main political parties failed to agree on a coalition government.
2011 Aug 24, In Nicaragua Catholic priest Marlon de Jesus Garcia was laid to rest. His body was found earlier this week in La Concepcion, a city south of Managua. Police said he died of asphyxiation and were treating the investigation as a homicide case. The priest was a critic of the government.
2011 Aug 24, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev near Lake Baikal. A spokesman for Medvedev said North Korea is ready to impose a moratorium on nuclear missile tests if international talks on its nuclear program resume.
2011 Aug 24, In northwestern Pakistan flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains swept through a village in the remote Kundian Valley, killing 16 people and leaving several missing.
2011 Aug 24, A Russian unmanned supply spaceship, launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, crashed and exploded in a forested area in Siberia. It was the 44th launch of a Progress supply ship to the int'l. space station, and the first failure in the nearly 13-year life of the complex.
2011 Aug 24, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak wrapped up a two-day state visit to Uzbekistan that was crowned by an agreement to develop a major gas field and build a chemicals plant in the country, energy deals worth a total of around $4.1 billion.
2011 Aug 24, Syrian activists said tanks stormed Deir el-Zour and made sweeping arrests there as the regime faced international threats of an arms embargo and new sanctions.
2011 Aug 24, One of Taiwan's best regarded hospitals mistakenly transplanted HIV-infected organs into five patients after a hospital staffer misheard the donor's test results by telephone.
2011 Aug 24, Youths torched a bar on Tanzania's Zanzibar archipelago in a reported protest against alcohol sales, the third bar attacked this month on the popular tourist island.
2011 Aug 24, Trinidad police said more than 140 people have been arrested on the Caribbean island during a crackdown on gangs amid a state of emergency declared by the national government.
2011 Aug 24, In Ukraine over 5,000 opposition activists rallied on the 20th anniversary of Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union, protesting the arrest of former PM Yulia Tymoshenko and demanding early elections.
2011 Aug 24, In Yemen military and medical officials said airstrikes have killed 30 suspected al-Qaida-linked militants near Zinjibar, Abyan province. 8 soldiers died in clashes in the area.
2012 Aug 24, In Alaska a hiker in Denali National Park photographed a grizzly bear for at least eight minutes before the bear mauled and killed him in the first fatal attack in the park's history.
2012 Aug 24, In San Jose, Ca., Apple won more than $1 billion in a massive US court victory over Samsung, in one of the biggest patent cases in decades, a verdict that could have huge market repercussions. Samsung reacted by saying it will contest the US verdict.
2012 Aug 24, New Jersey mail carrier Christina Nunez was arrested for using her daily route to move cocaine packages on behalf of a drug trafficking organization based in Puerto Rico.
2012 Aug 24, In NYC 9 people were wounded and two people were killed outside the Empire State Building after a disgruntled women's accessories designer named Jeffrey Johnson shot his 41 year-old former boss. The two dead include the gunman, who was shot and killed by police near the tourist entrance.
2012 Aug 24, Greenpeace activists were first offered hot soup, then sprayed with blasts of cold water after they stormed a floating Russia oil platform and erected climbing tents on the side of the rig to protest drilling in the Arctic.
2012 Aug 24, A NATO strike in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province killed Mullah Dadullah, the self-proclaimed Taliban leader in Pakistan's Bajur tribal area. Pakistani intelligence officials said Dadullah and 19 others were killed in the attack.
2012 Aug 24, Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid The Sun published nude photographs of Prince Harry (27), claiming it defied royal orders not to print them in defense of press freedom.
2012 Aug 24, In the Central African Republic a clash between a squad of Ugandan troops and the insurgents -- headed by Dominic Ongwen, one of three LRA commanders wanted by the International Criminal Court -- left 2 rebels dead.
2012 Aug 24, In northeast China 3 people were killed and five injured when an eight-lane bridge collapsed, only nine months after it opened in Harbin city.
2012 Aug 24, In Egypt some 200 hundred protesters rallied in Tahrir Square to denounce the country's Islamist president and his Muslim Brotherhood group.
2012 Aug 24, Gambia executed nine convicted criminals. Amnesty International warned that dozens more on death-row were under imminent threat as the West African nation carries out its first death sentences in 27 years.
2012 Aug 24, In Iraq a mortar attack targeting Shiite worshippers killed three people in eastern Baghdad. Authorities were investigating whether attackers set off explosions that sparked an early morning fire at a nightclub that left six dead.
2012 Aug 24, In Lebanon new clashes between pro- and anti-Syrian factions in Tripoli killed two people holing a fragile truce and stoking fears of a spillover of bloodshed.
2012 Aug 24, The Mexican Navy said federal police shot at a vehicle carrying two US government employees near Cuernavaca after the vehicle came under attack from unidentified gunmen. 2 US government employees were wounded after their vehicle drove into a rural, mountainous area outside the capital where the officers were looking for criminals. Officials from both countries called the incident and accident.
2012 Aug 24, In Myanmar Kachin rebels said China has pushed thousands of Kachin refugees from Yunnan province back across the border into a province wracked by fighting between government troops and ethnic guerillas.
2012 Aug 24, In New Zealand Hui "Leo" Gao, who fled to China after a bank mistakenly deposited millions of dollars into his account, was jailed for four years and seven months. His then-partner Kara Hurring was sentenced to nine months home detention in the same court and ordered to repay almost NZ$12,000 she had obtained using Gao's credit card. The court was told that NZ$3.8 million of the money had still not been recovered and Gao had provided no explanation about what happened to it.
2012 Aug 24, Nigerian military forces stormed the hideout of a militant gang operating on the waters of oil-producing Cross River State and rescued 28 oil workers working for a Chinese petroleum company. They had been abducted a day earlier.
2012 Aug 24, A Norwegian court sentenced Anders Behring Breivik (33) to prison, denying prosecutors the insanity ruling they hoped would show that his June 22, 2011, massacre of 77 people was the work of a madman, not part of an anti-Muslim crusade.
2012 Aug 24, In Pakistan US missiles slammed into three compounds in North Waziristan, killing 18 suspected militants. Foreign Ministry spokesman Moazzam Ahmad Khan called the attacks illegal, unproductive.
2012 Aug 24, A Russian court unexpectedly acquitted opposition leader and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov of participating in an unauthorized rally.
2012 Aug 24, Syrian forces blitzed areas in and around the northern city of Aleppo. At least 50 unidentified bodies were found shot dead in the last 24 hours, notably in Aleppo and Damascus. Prominent independent film producer Orwa Nyrabia went missing after going to Damascus airport to catch a flight to Cairo.
2012 Aug 24, Sierra Leone lawmakers passed a sexual offences law introducing stiff minimum sentences for offenders that has been hailed as a victory in a nation where sexual abuse is rife.
2012 Aug 24, In Thailand 300 inmates were pardoned including two imprisoned in 2010 for insulting the revered monarchy (lese majeste).
2013 Aug 24, In California the Rim Fire continued to grow with at least 129,620 acres burned.
(SSFC, 8/25/13, p.A10)
2013 Aug 24, In Florida Hubert Allen Jr. (72), a longtime employee at Pritchett Trucking, shot and killed 2 former co-workers and then killed himself at his home in Lake Butler. Two others were wounded.
2013 Aug 24, In Colombia FARC guerrillas killed 14 soldiers in an ambush in Arauca state. 2 guerrilas were left dead.
2013 Aug 24, In CongoDRC shells fired by M23 rebels killed at least 3 people in the eastern city of Goma. Two UN peacekeepers from Uruguay reportedly shot dead 2 people who were part of a crowd that tried to storm the mission's base in Goma during a protest against alleged UN inaction in the strife-torn region.
(Reuters, 8/24/13)(AFP, 8/26/13)
2013 Aug 24, Egyptian troops killed four militants who attacked a military checkpoint in Sinai near the border with Gaza.
2013 Aug 24, An Egyptian official said the country's border crossing with Gaza, which was closed after a deadly attack on policemen this week, has reopened, but will be open only for four hours every day because security concerns remain high in Sinai.
{Egypt, Palestine}
2013 Aug 24, In India police arrested a 2nd man in the gang rape of a young photojournalist in Mumbai, and said they had enough evidence to prosecute those responsible for a crime that has renewed public outcry over sexual violence in the country. The victim (22) remained in a hospital and was recovering well after being repeatedly raped by five men on Aug 22 in a deserted textile mill.
2013 Aug 24, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said for the first time that chemical weapons had killed people in ally Syria and called for the international community to prevent their use.
2013 Aug 24, In northwestern Myanmar hundreds of Buddhists carrying sticks and swords went on a rampage in a village, torching dozens of homes and shops following rumors that a young woman had been sexually assaulted by a Muslim man.
2013 Aug 24, In Nigeria gunmen killed 4 policemen who attempted to prevent the abduction of a prominent lawyer on a road near Benin.
2013 Aug 24, Pakistan released 337 Indian prisoners, most of them fishermen, in the latest sign that Pakistan's new government wants to improve rocky ties between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
2013 Aug 24, Thousands of Swazis voted in the first round of parliamentary elections that pro-democracy groups have dismissed as window dressing in Africa's last absolute monarchy.
2013 Aug 24, Syrian state television said soldiers found chemical materials in tunnels that had been used by rebels, rejecting blame for a nerve gas attack that killed hundreds this week and heightened Western calls for foreign intervention.
2013 Aug 24, Doctors Without Borders said some 355 people, who showed "neurotoxic symptoms," died following the suspected chemical weapons attack this week near Syria's capital.
2014 Aug 24, The United States used aircraft and drones to strike targets in northern Iraq to try to rein in Islamic State militants.
2014 Aug 24, Two New York comics dealers submitted the winning bid for a rare copy of Action Comics No. 1, the 1938 book in which Superman first appeared. They bid a record $3.2 million in an e-Bay auction.
2014 Aug 24, Four bodies were found floating in debris off the Atlantic coast of Florida but no boat wreckage was discovered.
2014 Aug 24, Peter Theo Curtis (45), an American journalist kidnapped and held hostage for nearly two years by an al-Qaida-linked group in Syria, was released in the Golan Heights. Curtis Massachusetts wrote under the byline Theo Padnos.
2014 Aug 24, Sir Richard Attenborough (b.1923), Oscar winning English actor and director, died. His films included "In Which We Serve" (1942), "Brighton Rock" (1947), "Oh! What A Lovely War" (1969) and "Jurassic Park" (1993). He won an Oscar for directing "Gandhi" (1982).
2014 Aug 24, Congo DRC confirmed its first two cases this year of Ebola but claimed they were unrelated to the epidemic ravaging West Africa. The confirmation marked the 7th outbreak of Ebola in Congo DRC, where the virus was first identified in 1976 near the Ebola River.
2014 Aug 24, In Egypt Mahienour el-Masry, a secular activist sentenced for protesting, began a hunger strike. At least a dozen protesters and activists behind bars have started a hunger strike in the past week, including prominent blogger and activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah.
2014 Aug 24, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard said it has brought down an Israeli stealth drone above the Natanz uranium enrichment site.
2014 Aug 24, Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu warned Palestinian civilians to leave immediately any site where militants are operating. An Israeli strike on a car killed Mohammed al-Ghoul, described by the Israeli military as a Hamas official responsible for "terror fund transactions." In another attack, a mother and her three children were killed when their home was bombed in Jabalya refugee camp.
2014 Aug 24, The Italian navy recovered 24 bodies after a fishing boat capsized in the Mediterranean. 364 migrants were rescued. Italian rescue operations over the weekend picked up some 3,500 refugees.
2014 Aug 24, In Liberia Dr. Abraham Borbo, one of three Africans to receive the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp, died. Only six people in the world are known to have received ZMapp. The small supply is now said to be exhausted and it is expected to be months before more can be produced by its US maker.
2014 Aug 24, Libya's parliament in Tobruk named a new military chief of staff tasked with tackling armed militias that control vast areas of the country. Colonel Abdel Razzak Nadhuri was chosen by 88 out of 124 MPs present and promoted to the rank of general.
2014 Aug 24, Macau police arrested five people involved with an informal poll to measure support for direct elections of the Chinese-controlled city's leader. The five were arrested after activists kicked off the weeklong unofficial referendum inspired by a similar vote in June in nearby Hong Kong that Beijing denounced as an illegal farce but which drew nearly 800,000 votes.
2014 Aug 24, In Nigeria Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram, said in a video that he has created an Islamic caliphate in Gwoza, Borno state, seized by the insurgents earlier this month.
2014 Aug 24, Nigeria's striking public sector doctors said they would suspend a nearly two-month strike to help combat the Ebola outbreak.
2014 Aug 24, In South Sudan a member of an East African regional body monitoring a ceasefire died of a heart attack after some monitors were detained by rebels in Unity state, further complicating a peace process.
2014 Aug 24, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche said it is buying InterMune of Brisbane, Ca., for $8.3 billion in an all cash transaction.
2014 Aug 24, In Syria at least 32 rebels were reported killed in an army ambush on a rebel convoy in the southern province of Daraa.
2014 Aug 24, In southeast Turkey Kurdish rebels abducted three Chinese workers and attacked a thermal power plant where they worked. They were seized while grocery shopping near the town Silopi and security forces soon launched an operation to rescue them.
2014 Aug 24, In eastern Ukraine pro-Russian separatists marched dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war through Donetsk in a parade meant to counter Independence Day celebrations in Kiev.
2014 Aug 24, Yemen's Shiite rebel group called for new protests after rejecting a draft proposal by a presidential delegation to stop their demonstrations in return for a new government and a review of the country's economic policies.
2015 Aug 24, Louisiana State Trooper Steven Vincent (43) died after being shot in the head a day earlier by Kevin Daigle (54) during a traffic stop.
2015 Aug 24, The US stock market fell again as the Dow Jones dropped 588 to 15,871; the S&P fell 77 to 1,893; the Nasdaq fell 179 to 4526.
2015 Aug 24, In Afghanistan the Taliban seized Musa Qala, Helmand province, despite US air strikes to repel them.
2015 Aug 24, Brazil's government announced it will slash the number of ministries and reduce its spending, in an effort to show commitment to austerity that could be politically costly for President Dilma Rousseff.
2015 Aug 24, British citizen Damian Moran said almost 80,000 people had signed a petition urging the arrest of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes when he visits London next month. Israel launched military action in the Gaza Strip on July 8, 2014, leading to the deaths of more than 2,000 Palestinians and 66 Israeli soldiers.
2015 Aug 24, Chinese border patrol officials seized 620 wild turtles and tortoises, 510 of them considered endangered, that were found alive in a shipment of frozen seafood from Vietnam.
2015 Aug 24, In Egypt a bomb struck a bus carrying policemen, killing 3 and wounding 33 in the Nile Delta province of Baheira.
2015 Aug 24, French President Francois Hollande awarded France's highest honor, the Legion d'honneur, to three US citizens and Briton Chris Norman, who on August 21 helped disarm a suspected Islamist militant on a train.
2015 Aug 24, Guinea-Bissau's new PM Baciro Dja (39) sacked the chiefs of the state-owned radio and television services for "bias" in their reporting of a recent government shake-up. Dja was appointed last week after President Jose Mario Vaz fired his predecessor Domingos Simoes Pereira.
2015 Aug 24, Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged followers to hold anti-corruption protests in Baghdad this week, the first major political figure to issue such a call. A series of Islamic State suicide car bombings targeting a military outpost in Anbar province killed 8 soldiers and wounded six. In Baghdad three separate roadside bombings killed 7 people and wounded 24. In Baghdad Col. Ahmed Zarzour, an Army helicopter pilot, was killed by an explosive device attached to his car.
(AFP, 8/24/15)(AP, 8/24/15)(SFC, 8/26/15, p.A5)
2015 Aug 24, Thousands of exhausted migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa crossed on foot from Macedonia into Serbia on their way to Western Europe.
2015 Aug 24, In Nepal 11 people were killed when demonstrators attacked police with spears, knives, axes and scythes during a protest against proposals for administrative reform. Protesters from the Tharu ethnic group were demanding a separate state in the new constitution. At least 7 policemen were killed in clashes when tens of thousands massed in Tikapur.
2015 Aug 24, An international arbitration panel said Russia must compensate the Netherlands for seizing a Greenpeace ship protesting at an oil platform in Arctic waters in breach of an international treaty regulating the laws of the sea. The Arctic Sunrise, sailing under a Dutch flag, was seized by Russian authorities in September 2013 during a protest against an offshore oil platform.
2015 Aug 24, A strike by Palestinian teachers and personnel in Gaza kept more than 200,000 children from returning to school for the new term, as the UN agency that employs them struggled financially.
2015 Aug 24, South Korean President Park Geun-hye demanded that North Korea apologize over recent landmine blasts, even as the bitter rivals held marathon talks to defuse tensions that have brought the peninsula back to the brink of armed conflict.
2015 Aug 24, Sri Lanka's police arrested four army personnel, including two senior officers, in connection with the abduction of dissident cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda in January, 2010, that triggered international condemnation of the island's rights record. The cartoonist was never seen again.
2015 Aug 24, A Swiss official says his country has made headway toward returning some $40 million that was stolen from the Tunisian state and has been sitting in Swiss banks since Tunisia's longtime regime collapsed in the Arab Spring uprising.
2015 Aug 24, In Syria a US air strike outside Raqqa killed Junaid Hussain (21), an Islamic State hacker from Birmingham, England. The strike also killed 3 civilians.
(SFC, 8/28/15, p.A4)(AFP, 1/29/16)
2015 Aug 24, In northeastern Turkey two buildings collapsed during heavy flooding, killing eight people in Artvin province.
2015 Aug 24, UN Security Council members opened their first-ever meeting on LGBT rights to hear Syrian and Iraqi gays tell of terror under Islamic State rule.
2015 Aug 24, Venezuela announced a 60-day extension of its partial closure of the border with Colombia.
2015 Aug 24, In Yemen unidentified gunmen raided the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Aden, holding staff at gunpoint and stealing cars, cash and equipment.
2016 Aug 24, Pres. Obama designated Maine's Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, an 87,500-acre parcel of mountains, rivers, and forests abutting the eastern edge of Baxter State Park. The land was donated by Burt's Bees founder Roxanne Quimby, who has advocated for years to establish the site as a national park. His executive action, allowed under the 1906 Antiquities Act, added the unit to the National Park Service as a national monument, bypassing the need for Congress to authorize a new national park.
(http://downeast.com/new-maine-national-monument/)
2016 Aug 24, Several tornadoes plowed through central Indiana, demolishing numerous homes and a Starbucks cafe in the town of Kokomo and cutting off power to thousands of Indianapolis-area residents. No serious injuries were reported.
2016 Aug 24, In Afghanistan 12 people, including 7 students and a professor, were killed in an attack on the American University in Kabul. A car bomb followed by gunfire, as suspected militants battled into the complex where foreign staff and pupils were working. By the next morning Afghan forces killed at least 2 attackers.
2016 Aug 24, Australia's New South Wales parliament in Sydney banned greyhound racing in an overnight session effective from July 1, 2017.
2016 Aug 24, In Bolivia at least one person was killed and dozens injured after miners and riot police exchanged sticks of dynamite and tear gas during a protest to demand better work conditions.
2016 Aug 24, In Britain 5 men drowned off Camber Sands beach in southern England. The beach, known for rip-tides, had no lifeguard.
2016 Aug 24, Colombia's government and Marxist FARC rebels reached a final peace deal in Havana to end a five-decade war which once took the resource-rich country to the brink of collapse. It will now go to a plebiscite vote on October 2.
2016 Aug 24, In Egypt a knife-wielding attacker was shot and killed after he stabbed a guard at the Coptic Virgin Mary church in Cairo's eastern suburb of Nozha.
2016 Aug 24, India said it is investigating the extent to which secrets about French Scorpene submarines being built in the country have been compromised, after a leak of documents relating to its combat capabilities. The leak contains more than 22,000 pages outlining the secret capabilities of six submarines that French builder DCNS has designed for the Indian Navy.
2016 Aug 24, An Indian official said heavy monsoon rains have ended two successive drought years with the Ganges River and its tributaries rising above the danger level, triggering evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from flooded homes in the north and east. Drowning, electrocution or injuries from collapsed houses have killed at least 175 people this season.
2016 Aug 24, Indian government forces fired shotguns and tear gas in India's portion of Kashmir to break up new protests demanding an end to Indian rule in the disputed region, killing a young man and wounding dozens of other people.
2016 Aug 24, An Israeli soldier shot dead a Palestinian motorist who had stabbed him and threw rocks from his car at a military vehicle in the occupied West Bank.
2016 Aug 24, A magnitude 6-6.2 earthquake struck central Italy. 17 deaths were confirmed in Amatrice alone. The preliminary death toll was 38. The death toll soon climbed to 290. A Polish geologist said it was caused by the slow but constant under-surface movement of the African Plate toward Europe.
2016 Aug 24, In Myanmar a powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 shook the center of the country, knocking glasses off tables and sending people running out of buildings in Yangon. At least 4 people were killed.
2016 Aug 24, In New Zealand Czech tourist Pavlina Pizova was rescued from a park warden's hut on the snowed-in Routeburn Track near Queenstown. Her partner had died almost a month earlier after he slipped down an icy bank and became wedged between rocks and branches.
2016 Aug 24, A Pakistani lawyer said imprisoned politician Waseem Akhtar, who is almost certain to be the next mayor of Karachi, will run the teeming metropolis via "video link" from his prison cell. Akhtar, a member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), was arrested last month on suspicion of aiding alleged militants.
2016 Aug 24, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he's willing to allow a resumption of online gambling in the Southeast Asian nation if correct taxes are paid and gaming parlor are far from schools and churches.
2016 Aug 24, In the Philippines Abu Sayyaf militants killed Patrick James Aldovar (18) near southern Sulu province's Indanan town then later abandoned his head in a neighborhood. Aldovar, seized by the militants on July 16 in Jolo town, was decapitated after his family failed to pay ransom. After hearing of the beheading President Rodrigo Duterte ordered troops to destroy the militants.
2016 Aug 24, South Korea said a ballistic missile fired from a North Korean submarine flew about 500 km (310 miles), the longest distance achieved by the North for such a weapon. The missile flew at a high trajectory and has a range of more than 1,000 km (620 miles) at a normal angle.
2016 Aug 24, Turkish counter-terror police launched dawn raids targeting Islamic State members across Istanbul.
2016 Aug 24, Turkish tanks and armoured vehicles crossed into the Islamic State group-held border district of Jarablus with air cover from the US-led coalition in "Operation Euphrates Shield." The Syrian government and Syrian Kurdish officials condemned the incursion.
(AFP, 8/24/16)(Reuters, 8/24/16)(Reuters, 8/25/16)
2017 Aug 24, The US Navy suspended search and rescue efforts for eight missing USS John S. McCain sailors in an approximately 2,100-square mile area east of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore.
2017 Aug 24, The Earth-observation Formosat-5 satellite for Taiwan's National Space Organization was launched into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
2017 Aug 24, Florida executed Mark Asay (53) using a three drug injection that included etomidate, criticized by some as being unproven in an execution. Asay was the first white man executed in Florida for killing a black man.
2017 Aug 24, In Minnesota Lili Huang (36) was sentenced to 12 months and one day in jail. She was accused of beating and starving a woman she brought from China to work as a nanny will be deported after she spends a year in jail. Her 58-year-old nanny was found wandering in the street in July 2016, battered and malnourished.
2017 Aug 24, In North Carolina the Durham Public Schools' board voted unanimously to revise its dress code to prohibit the Confederate flag, Ku Klux Klan symbols and swastikas.
2017 Aug 24, In South Carolina fired dishwasher Thomas Demetrius Burns (53) fatally shot a chef and held a small number of people hostage before he was shot by police at Virginia's restaurant in Charleston.
2017 Aug 24, Pete Kuykendall (b.1938), musician and co-founder of the publication "Bluegrass Unlimited" (1966), died in Warrenton, Va.
(SSFC, 9/3/17, p.C9)
2017 Aug 24, Angola's UNITA party said it has 40 percent of two million votes in its count, compared to 47 percent for the ruling MPLA party. It said another opposition group, CASA-CE, has 9 percent in the partial count from the Aug 23 election. The MPLA claimed it won a majority with five million votes counted in its own tally.
2017 Aug 24, Azeri police in Baku detained Mehman Aliyev, the head of independent Turan news agency, on suspicion of tax evasion and illegal business activities. Turan suspended its operations from Sept. 1. Mehman Aliyev was released on Sept. 11, but an investigation of the allegations continued.
2017 Aug 24, Bahraini authorities said they have arrested seven of ten people allegedly linked to a Shiite militant group. The Ministry of Interior said the cell is led by Hussain Ali Ahmed Dawood, who is believed to be in Iran and who is a leader in the Ashtar Brigade, which has claimed past bombings and attacks in the tiny Gulf nation.
2017 Aug 24, Officials said more than 950 people have been killed in floods triggered by seasonal monsoon rains in Bangladesh, India and Nepal.
2017 Aug 24, In Brazil a commuter boat carrying more than 100 passengers flipped and sank on the Bay of All Saints off the coast of Salvador city. At least 18 people were killed and dozens left missing.
2017 Aug 24, Canadian authorities arraigned Laos-born Katay-Khaophone Sychanta (35) on charges of drug possession, obstructing the work of police and false documents. The alleged drug smuggler was on the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement list of its 10 most wanted criminals.
2017 Aug 24, Colombia's Caracol Television said President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government has pulled its channel from Venezuela's airwaves, slamming the move as a crackdown on media. The signal for RCN was also pulled.
(Reuters, 8/24/17)(SSFC, 8/27/17, p.A5)
2017 Aug 24, Egypt's Interior Ministry said security forces have killed two members of a group with suspected links to the Muslim Brotherhood in a shootout at their hideout northwest of Cairo. It said the suspects were among the "most prominent cadres" of the Hasm movement.
2017 Aug 24, India's Supreme Court ruled that citizens have a constitutional right to privacy, a landmark decision that could jeopardize Aadhaar, a government program holding biometric data on over a billion people.
2017 Aug 24, Indonesian police said three people were arrested this week on suspicion of being part of a syndicate being paid to spread incendiary material online through social media. The material involved religious and ethnic issues and posts defamatory to government officials.
2017 Aug 24, In Italy migrants in a Rome piazza threw rocks, bottles and gas cans at police in riot gear who were using water jets to clear out about 100 mostly Ethiopian and Eritrean asylum-seekers as part of a security operation criticized by humanitarian groups.
2017 Aug 24, Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta rebuked newly elected members of parliament for resisting modest cuts to their salaries and perks, worth more than $10,000 a month, and said citizens were angry with extravagance in the government.
2017 Aug 24, The head of Macau's observatory stepped down after chaos and confusion followed one of the strongest typhoons on record. Typhoon Hato left at least 22 dead in southern China.
2017 Aug 24, President Rodrigo Duterte traveled to the main battle zone in southern Marawi after Philippine troops finally recaptured a main mosque where Islamic State-linked militants had taken cover with their hostages in a three-month siege. More than 760 people, including 595 militants, have died in the Marawi fighting.
2017 Aug 24, The Syrian military advanced south from southern areas of Raqqa province, joining up with their forces north of the town of al-Sukhna in Homs province and in so doing closing the circle around the pocket of IS insurgents.
2017 Aug 24, The United Nations called for a humanitarian pause to allow an estimated 20,000 trapped civilians to escape from the Syrian city of Raqqa, and urged the US-led coalition to rein in air strikes that have caused casualties.
2017 Aug 24, Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis descended on Sanaa in a major show of force for ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose alliance with the country's Shiite Huthi rebels has been shaken by mutual distrust.
2018 Aug 24, US President Donald Trump abruptly canceled his top diplomat's planned trip to North Korea, publicly acknowledging for the first time that his effort to get Pyongyang to denuclearize had stalled since his summit with the North's leader.
2018 Aug 24, US President Donald Trump's administration cut more than $200 million in aid for the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
2018 Aug 24, In San Francisco major technology firms including Facebook, Google and Twitter met as part of an effort to coordinate the battle against misinformation campaigns by foreign agents. Microsoft, Snapchat and other tech firms were expected to participate in the gathering called by Facebook cybersecurity head Nathaniel Gleicher.
2018 Aug 24, In southern California a tanker truck crashed and burned on a highway near Los Angeles Int'l. Airport, killing two people and causing a massive traffic jam.
2018 Aug 24, Torrential rains pummeled Hawaii as Hurricane Lane swirled toward the island state, triggering landslides, "catastrophic" flooding and prompting stark warnings from authorities.
2018 Aug 24, Robin Leach (b.1941), British-born TV host of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" (1984-1995), died in Las Vegas.
(http://tinyurl.com/ybb2tmo8)(SSFC, 8/26/18, p.C1)
2018 Aug 24, Former Afghan banker Sher Khan Fernod, found guilty of embezzling millions of dollars and co-conspiracy in a theft of almost $1 billion from a private bank that led to a fiscal crisis in 2010, died in prison in Kabul.
2018 Aug 24, In Australia disgruntled government lawmakers forced PM Malcolm Turnbull from office, arguing that most had lost faith in his leadership. New PM Scott Morrison promised a stable government. The push to oust Turnbull, led by fellow lawmaker Peter Dutton over four chaotic days, was inspired by a feud between hard-right conservatives and moderates.
2018 Aug 24, Influential British dancer, choreographer and mime artist Lindsay Kemp (b.1938) died at his home in Livorno, Tuscany. He was known for tutoring singers David Bowie and Kate Bush during his career.
2018 Aug 24, In China a ride-sharing passenger (20) in the eastern city of Wenzhou was raped and killed by a driver for Didi Chuxing, China's largest ride-hailing firm. Police found and arrested the suspect, a 27-year-old driver called Zhong, early the next day.
2018 Aug 24, CongoDRC's election commission ruled out the candidacy of Jean-Pierre Bemba on the basis that he had been "convicted by the International Criminal Court" in March 2018 for bribing witnesses. He was handed a year-long prison term and a 300,000 euro fine. But the Hague court had overturned Bemba's conviction for war crimes.
2018 Aug 24, In central Finland a bus plunged about 10 meters (33 feet) from a bridge onto railway tracks in Kuopio, killing four people and injuring more than 20.
2018 Aug 24, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu asked Baltic state leaders for help in convincing the EU to step up pressure on Iran and slammed a Brussels aid package for Teheran at a news conference in Vilnius with his Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian counterparts.
2018 Aug 24, Many of the 150 migrants stranded aboard a coast guard ship for a ninth day began a hunger strike out of frustration that Italy won't let them disembark in Sicily unless fellow European Union nations first pledge to take them.
2018 Aug 24, In Mexico seven people were killed in an armed confrontation between gunmen and army troops in El Naranjo, Guerrero state.
(AP, 8/24/18)(SSFC, 8/26/18, p.A4)
2018 Aug 24, Mexican authorities captured gulf cartel leader Hector Adrian Lucio Benavides in Monterrey, Nuevo Leone state.
2018 Aug 24, In Nepal one person was killed and dozens injured when police opened fire on protesters demanding action over the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl. Schoolgirl Nirmala Panta went missing in late July and her body was found the following day in a sugar-cane field.
2018 Aug 24, Dutch PM Mark Rutte distanced his government from a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest being organized later this year by anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders.
2018 Aug 24, In Papua New Guinea a volcano erupted early today, forcing 2,000 villagers to flee from lava flows on Manam Island.
2018 Aug 24, A 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Peru, close to its borders with Brazil and Bolivia.
2018 Aug 24, Human Rights Watch said the Saudi-led coalition fighting Shiite rebels in Yemen failed to redress civilian victims and conduct credible investigations into alleged war crimes committed there.
2018 Aug 24, In Serbia a poisonous gas leak killed two men at the National Library in Belgrade. Carbon dioxide leaked as the two victims, both maintenance workers, were testing the building's firefighting capabilities.
2018 Aug 24, A South Korean high court extended the 24-year prison sentence of former President Park Geun-hye for corruption in office. The Seoul High Court handed out a 25-year prison sentence after concluding Park took more money in bribes than initially believed.
2018 Aug 24, More than 300 South Koreans traveled to the North's Diamond Mountain resort for three days of meetings with their long-lost relatives in a second round of temporary reunions of family members separated for decades by the Korean War.
2018 Aug 24, Spain's Socialist government passed a decree allowing the exhumation of the remains of Francisco Franco from his vast mausoleum, a decision that divides Spaniards and has opened old wounds.
2018 Aug 24, Tajikistan freed prominent human rights lawyer Shukhrat Kudratov as Western governments and rights groups stepped up pressure on the authoritarian Central Asian country. He had spent nearly four years behind bars on embezzlement charges.
2018 Aug 24, Ukraine marked 27 years of independence with its biggest ever military parade in central Kiev, as war continued against Russian-backed separatists in the country's east.
2018 Aug 24, The UN migration agency said the exodus of migrants from Venezuela is building towards a "crisis moment" comparable to events involving refugees in the Mediterranean.
2018 Aug 24, Zimbabwe's constitutional court unanimously upheld Pres. Emmerson Mnangagwa's narrow victory in last month's historic election after the opposition alleged vote-rigging, saying "sufficient and credible evidence" had not been produced.
2019 Aug 24, US federal officials said more than 40 wild burros have been found shot and killed along I-5 near the California-Nevada line.
2019 Aug 24, In Colorado Elijah McClain (23) was put into a choke hold by police in Aurora. McClain was pronounced dead on August 30 after being detained by police and injected with ketamine as a sedative by paramedics. In 2020 Gov. Jared Polis ordered an investigation into the case.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elijah_McClain)(SFC, 6/26/20, p.A5)
2019 Aug 24, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced a new state commission to review educational standards for teaching black history in the state.
2019 Aug 24, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro said he's sending troops to battle fires roaring through vast expanses of the Amazon as President Donald Trump offered US support to combat the disaster. Brazil said about 44,000 Brazilian troops were planned to deploy.
2019 Aug 24, In Canada Dragons' Den and Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary was involved in a boat crash that resulted in two deaths. The incident happened late today on Lake Joseph, in the Muskoka area of Ontario.
2019 Aug 24, China said it strongly opposes Washington's decision to levy additional tariffs on $550 billion worth of Chinese goods and warned the United States of consequences if it does not end its "wrong actions".
2019 Aug 24, Ethiopia's state broadcaster reported that parliament has approved an electoral and political parties draft bill, paving the way for national elections next year, the first to be held under reformist PM Abiy Ahmed.
2019 Aug 24, In France thousands of anti-globalization and environmental activists joined yellow vest protesters and Basque separatists near the coastal resort of Biarritz to demand action from G7 and other world leaders set to meet there.
2019 Aug 24, In Germany thousands of people attended a protest against racism in Dresden, the capital of Saxony state, two weeks ahead of state elections.
2019 Aug 24, Hong Kong police fired volleys of tear gas to break up anti-government protests in a gritty industrial suburb after activists threw petrol bombs and bricks. China freed British consulate worker Simon Cheng whose 15-day detention had fuelled tensions.
2019 Aug 24, Indian PM Narendra Modi received the Order of Zayed, the United Arab Emirates' highest civilian honor, during a visit to the oil-rich Gulf nation, reinforcing ties between the countries even as he pursues stripping statehood from the disputed Muslim-majority region of Kashmir.
2019 Aug 24, Arun Jaitley (66), the former Indian finance minister and one of PM Narendra Modi's closest associates, died in a New Delhi hospital, nearly two weeks after he was admitted following breathing difficulties.
2019 Aug 24, Israel bombed Iranian forces in Syria. One Iranian and two fighters from Hezbollah, the Shiite Lebanese militia backed by Iran, were killed in the airstrike in Aqraba, south-east of Damascus late today.
(The Telegraph, 8/25/19)
2019 Aug 24, Mexican journalist Nevith Condes Jaramillo was found dead with stab wounds in the Tejupilco municipality about 75 miles from Mexico City, adding to a growing list of reporter deaths in one of the world's most dangerous countries for the press.
2019 Aug 24, Nauru President Baron Waqa was voted out of office in the tiny South Pacific island nation after six years in power.
2019 Aug 24, North Korea's Kim Jong Un guided a test fire of a newly developed super-large multiple rocket launcher. Two suspected short-range ballistic missiles were fired off its east coast in the seventh weapons launch in a month, a day after it vowed to remain America's biggest threat in protest of US-led sanctions on the country. US Pres. Donald Trump downplayed the latest launch.
(AP, 8/24/19)(Bloomberg, 8/24/19)
2019 Aug 24, Russia test-fired Sineva and Bulava ballistic missiles from two submarines from the polar region of the Arctic Ocean and from the Barents Sea as part of combat training.
2019 Aug 24, A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a humanoid robot, the FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research), failed to dock with the International Space Station (ISS). Officials planned to attempt the docking on August 26.
2019 Aug 24, In Syria a car bomb exploded in the rebel-held city of Idlib. One person was reported killed and some others wounded. Air strikes hit its outskirts in a government offensive on the last major opposition bastion.
2019 Aug 24, In Syria a heavily fortified Turkish observation post in the northwestern village of Morek stood surrounded on all sides by Syrian troops, a testament to the rapid advance of Pres. Bashar Assad's forces in the northwest over the past three weeks as rebel defenses collapsed.
2019 Aug 24, Taiwan braced for typhoon Bailu, shutting businesses and schools as airlines cancelled hundreds of flights amid warnings of landslides, floods and high seas on the island.
2019 Aug 24, Yemeni forces loyal to the country's internationally recognized government wrested control of a military camp from a separatist militia backed by the United Arab Emirates just outside Ataq, the capital of oil-rich Shabwa province.
Go to August 25
Today in History August 25