text:
Today in History - April 27
For Asian History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
1124 Apr 27, Alexander I, king of Scotland (1107-24), died.
1296 Apr 27, England's King Edward I defeated the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar. He deposed King John and exiled him to France.
1509 Apr 27, Pope Julius II excommunicated the republic of Venice. The pope lifted the ban in February 1510.
1521 April 27, Ferdinand Magellan (41) was killed in a fight with natives on Mactan Island. Juan Sebastian Elcano, Magellan's second in command, returned to Spain with 18 men and one ship, the Vittorio, laden with spices. His coat of arms was augmented in reward with the inscription Primus circumdisti me: "You were the first to encircle me." Some 50,000 Chamorro people populated the islands.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan)(AP, 4/27/99)
1565 Apr 27, First Spanish settlement in Philippines was established in Cebu City.
1570 Apr 27, Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I [see Feb 25].
1623 Apr 27, Johann Adam Reincken, composer, was born.
1646 Apr 27, King Charles I fled Oxford.
1650 Apr 27, Scottish general Montrose was defeated.
1662 Apr 27, Netherlands and France signed a treaty of alliance in Paris.
(http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn1767012)
1677 Apr 27, Colonel Jeffreys became the governor of Virginia.
1702 Apr 27, Jean Bart (51), French captain, sea hero (Escape out of Plymouth), died.
1737 Apr 27, Edward Gibbon, historian, writer of "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," was born.
1759 Apr 27, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (d.1797), English writer, feminist (Female Reader), was born. "The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force."
(AP, 11/10/97)(MC, 4/27/02)
1768 Apr 27, John Wilkes (b.1725), English journalist, was arrested for seditious libel following his February return from exile in Europe.
1773 Apr 27, British Parliament passed the Tea Act. [see May 10, 1772]
1791 Apr 27, Samuel Finley Breece Morse, inventor, was born in Boston. Morse was a well-known painter who gained a wide reputation as a portrait artist. He graduated from Yale in 1810 and then studied painting in England for several years. Morse painted two notable portraits of Lafayette, was a founder of the National Academy of Design in 1826 and became professor of painting and sculpture at New York University in 1832-a position he held until his death in 1872. Morse invented the first practical recording telegraph in America and developed the Morse code, revolutionizing communication.
(HN, 4/27/99)(HNQ, 2/26/00)
1799 Apr 27, In Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) Gen. Toussaint L'Ouverture signed a treaty of friendship with the US under Pres. John Adams. Certain elements were kept secret in order not to alienate France.
1802 Apr 27, Abraham Louis Niedermeyer, composer, was born.
1805 Apr 27, US navy ships began to bombard the Tripoli port of Derna. Mercenaries gathered in Egypt and a small contingent of US Marines under former Tunis consul William Eaton attacked Tripoli and captured the city of Derna [later part of Libya].
(AP, 4/27/97)(HN, 4/27/98)(ON, 10/06, p.9)
1812 Apr 27, Friedrich von Flotow, composer (Martha), was born.
1813 Apr 27, Americans forces under Gen. Zebulon M. Pike (34) captured York (present day Toronto), the seat of government in Ontario; Pike was killed.
(HN, 4/27/99)(MC, 4/27/02)
1822 Apr 27, Ulysses S. Grant (d.1885), general and 18th U.S. president (1869-1877), was born in Point Pleasant [Hiram], Ohio.
1824 Apr 27, William Richard Bexfield, composer, was born.
1828 Apr 27, The London Zoo opened to fellows of the Zoological Society of London. It was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study. As of 2017 it was the world's oldest scientific zoo and housed 20,166 animals.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Zoo)(Reuters, 12/23/17)
1838 Apr 27, Fire destroyed half of Charleston.
1840 Apr 27, Edward Whymper, first to climb the Matterhorn on the border of Switzerland and Italy, was born.
(WUD, 1994, p.885)(HN, 4/27/98)
1848 Apr 27, Slave trade was abolished in the French colonies.
1849 Apr 27, Italian revolutionary Garibaldi took control of the defenses of Rome. He and his family had returned to Italy from Uruguay in 1848 to fight on behalf of the newly declared Republic of Rome, which had taken control of Rome and expelled Pope Pius IX, who opposed the goals of Italian nationalism.
1857 Apr 27, Establishment of Jewish congregations in Lower Austria prohibited.
1859 Apr 27, "Pomona" sank in North Atlantic drowning all 400 aboard.
1860 Apr 27, Thomas J Jackson (the future "Stonewall") was assigned to command Harpers Ferry.
1861 Apr 27, President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
1861 Apr 27, West Virginia seceded from Virginia after Virginia seceded from the Union.
1863 Apr 27, Battle of Streight's raid: Tuscumbia to Cedar Bluff, AL.
1863 Apr 27, The Army of the Potomac began marching on Chancellorsville.
1865 Apr 27, John Wilkes Booth was killed by Federal Cavalry in Virginia. In 2004 Michael W. Kauffman authored "American Brutus." In 2006 James L. Swanson authored "Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. [see Apr 26]
(HN, 4/27/98)(WSJ, 2/11/06, p.P10)(WSJ, 1/28/07, p.P10)
1865 Apr 27, The steamer Sultana caught fire and burned after one of its boilers exploded on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tenn., killing more than 1,400 paroled Union prisoners on their way home. One account reported 1,547 people dead. At least 1,238 of the 2,031 passengers, mostly former Union POWs, were killed.
(AP, 4/27/97)(SFC, 3/13/99, p.E6)(HN, 4/27/99)(MC, 4/27/02)
1867 Apr 27, Charles Gounod's Opera "Romeo et Juliette" was produced in Paris.
1870 Apr 27, Heinrich Schliemann discovered Troy.
1877 Apr 27, Jules Massenet's Opera "Le Roi de Lahore" was produced in Paris.
1881 Apr 27, Pogroms against Russian Jews started in Elisabethgrad.
1882 Apr 27, Ralph Waldo Emerson, US poet, philosopher, author, essayist, died. He was one of the original members of the Transcendental Club with Thoreau and Orestes Brownson.
(HNQ, 6/14/98)(WSJ, 5/28/99, p.W11)(MC, 4/27/02)
1886 Apr 27, A band of Apaches led by Geronimo attacked a ranch west of Fort Huachuca and killed 3 American citizens.
1891 Apr 27, Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev, composer, was born.
1892 Apr 27, Louis Victor de Broglie, physicist (studied electrons), was born.
1896 Apr 27, Wallace Hume Carothers (d.1937), American chemist, was born. Carothers became a brilliant organic chemist who, in addition to first developing nylon, also helped lay the groundwork for Neoprene.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Carothers)
1896 Apr 27, Rogers Hornsby (d.1963), among the greatest hitters in baseball history, was born in Texas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Hornsby)
1897 Apr 27, Grant's Tomb was dedicated.
1900 Apr 27, Walter Lantz, cartoonist, creator of Woody Woodpecker, was born.
1904 Apr 27, Cecil Day-Lewis, Irish poet, father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis, was born.
1909 Apr 27, In Turkey April 27 Reshad Efendi, the brother of Sultan Abdulhamid II, was proclaimed Sultan Mehmed V.
(HN, 4/27/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Hamid_II)
1913 Apr 27, The Knights of Lithuania were begun as a youth organization. Its purpose was to unite the Lithuanian youth living in the USA, and through them, preserve Lithuanian culture and restore freedom to Lithuania, then divided between Russia and Germany.
(http://vilnews.com/, 4/14/11)
1915 Apr 27, Alexander N. Scriabin (43), Russian pianist, composer (Prometheus), died.
(SFC, 2/16/99, p.B1)(MC, 4/27/02)
1920 Apr 27, Pogrom leader Petljoera (Petlyura) declared Ukraine Independence.
1922 Apr 27, Fritz Lang's "Dr Mabuse, der Spieler" premiered in Berlin.
1927 Apr 27, Coretta Scott King, civil rights activist, wife of Martin Luther King, Jr., was born.
1927 Apr 27, Actress Mae West was released from jail after 10 days. She and the entire cast and producers of her Broadway play "Sex" had been thrown in jail. The 1926 Mae West comedy-drama "Sex" caused a scandal and police closed it down after 375 performances.
(WSJ, 11/18/06, p.P10)(SSFC, 4/15/01, DB p.35)(SFC, 6/24/02, p.D2)
1931 Apr 27, Hawaii recorded a record 100 degrees in Pahala.
(SFC, 4/27/09, p.D10)
1931 Apr 27, Igor Oistrach, Russian violinist, son of David Oistrach, was born.
1932 Apr 27, American poet Hart Crane (b.1899) drowned after jumping from a steamer while en route to New York. In 1967 R.W.B. Lewis (d. 2002) authored "The Poetry of Hart Crane."
(AP, 4/27/97)(SFC, 6/17/02, p.B5)
1935 Apr 27, US Congress declared soil erosion "a national menace" in an act establishing the Soil Conservation Service in the Department of Agriculture (formerly the Soil Erosion Service in the U.S. Department of Interior). Under the direction of Hugh H. Bennett, the SCS developed extensive conservation programs that retained topsoil and prevented irreparable damage to the land. Farming techniques such as strip cropping, terracing, crop rotation, contour plowing, and cover crops were advocated. Farmers were paid to practice soil-conserving farming techniques.
(www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/dustbowl.htm)(Sm, 3/06, p.111)
1936 Apr 27, Joseph "Dutch" Bowers (b.1896), reportedly the first man to attempt an escape from Alcatraz prison, fell seventy feet to his death after being shot by a guard while climbing a fence.
(http://www.alcatrazhistory.com/bowers.htm)
1937 Apr 27, Sandy Dennis, actress (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), was born in Nebraska.
1937 Apr 27, The Franklin Roosevelt administration began distributing the nation's first Social Security checks.
(AP, 4/27/06)(AH, 4/07, p.14)
1937 Apr 27, German bombers of the Condor Legion conducted follow up raids at Guernica, Spain. [see Apr 26]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica)
1937 Apr 27, Antonio Gramsci (b.1891), Italian communist, philosopher and political theorist, died. He said that to eliminate the bourgeois state one must seize the institutions that reproduce the dominant class's thought patterns.
(Econ, 8/22/09, p.33)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci)
1938 Apr 27, King Zog of Albania married Geraldine Apponyi (22) of Hungary.
1941 Apr 27, Judith Blegen, opera singer (Papagena-Magic Flute), was born in Missoula, Mont.
1941 Apr 27, The Greek army capitulated to the Germans. Greece and the Greek islands were secured by Hitler.
(SFC,10/29/97, p.A23)(HN, 4/27/98)
1942 Apr 27, The 1st convoys of Japanese detainees arrived at the Tanforan detention center south of San Francisco. The assembly center remained in operation for 169 days after which detainees were transferred to relocation camps. Most of the Tanforan detainees were transferred to Abraham, Utah.
(Ind, 2/2/02, 5A)
1942 Apr 27, Tornado destroyed Pryor, Oklahoma, killing 100 and injuring 300.
1942 Apr 27, Belgium Jews were forced to wear stars.
1944 Apr 27, Dr. H. Corwin Hinshaw (d.2000) first treated 4 tuberculosis-infected guinea pigs with the newly developed streptomycin antibiotic. The animals were cured. Hinshaw was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1952 but the prize went to Dr. Selman a. Waksman of Rutgers, who discovered streptomycin.
(SFC, 1/11/01, p.C16)
1945 Apr 27, August Wilson, US playwright (Fences, Pulitzer 1987), was born.
1945 Apr 27, US 5th army entered Genoa.
1945 Apr 27, Italian partisans captured Mussolini.
1946 Apr 27, 1st radar installation aboard a commercial ship was installed.
1947 Apr 27, It was "Babe Ruth Day" at Yankee Stadium as baseball fans across the country honored the ailing star.
1950 Apr 27, South Africa passed the Group Areas Act, formally segregating races.
(HN, 4/27/98)(SFEC, 10/15/00, p.T8)
1953 Apr 27, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450: Security Requirements for Government Employment. The order listed "sexual perversion" as a condition for firing a federal employee and for denying employment to potential applicants. Homosexuality, moral perversion, and communism were categorized as national security threats; the issue of homosexual federal workers had become a dire federal personnel policy concern.
(http://tinyurl.com/3bblwc)
1953 Apr 27, US General Mark W. Clark issued Operation Moolah to coincide with Operation Little Switch, an exchange of sick and wounded POWs between the Communist and UN forces in North and South Korea. The US set up Operation Moolah to award $100,000 to the first pilot to defect in a Russian made MiG.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Moolah)(Econ, 5/16/15, p.79)
1955 Apr 27, The US government suspended the use of all Salk vaccine manufactured by Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley, Ca., pending the investigation of 7-14 cases among children inoculated with the company's vaccine.
(SFC, 4/22/05, p.F3)
1956 Apr 27, Light heavyweight boxer Rocky Marciano announced his retirement. Marciano, with 43 knockouts to his credit, retired having won every fight in his professional career.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Marciano)
1957 Apr 27, Mario A. Gianini, creator of the maraschino cherry, died.
1958 Apr 27, Billy Graham began a 6-week Bay Area crusade at the Cow Palace in Daly City, Ca. Some 18,000 crowded inside as another 5,000 stood in the parking lot. Graham began a 3-day revival crusade at the Cow Palace that drew nearly 700,000 people.
(SFC, 10/1/96, p.D1)(SSFC, 4/27/08, DB p.58)
1959 Apr 27, US State Dept. announced small arms stored in Canal Zone will be provided to Panamanian forces to repel Cuban invaders.
(DBD, p.824)
1959 Apr 27, Gordon Armstrong, inventor of the baby incubator, died.
1959 Apr 27, Liu Shaoqi (d.1969) was named president of China in the wake of the Great Leap Forward.
(AFP, 9/6/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi)
1960 Apr 27, The 1st atomic powered electric-drive submarine was launched at Tullibee.
1960 Apr 27, France's Gen. Charles de Gaulle flew into San Francisco and was welcomed by a 21-gun salute and some 250,000 people along his downtown motorcade.
1960 Apr 27, South Korean pres Syngman Rhee resigned. The government of Syngman Rhee was toppled. Parliament began investigations of alleged summary executions during the 1950-1953 war.
(SFC, 4/21/00, p.A19)(MC, 4/27/02)
1960 Apr 27, Togo, a UN Trust territory under French administration, gained independence. Sylvanus Olympio became the 1st chief of state.
(PC, 1992, p.973)(EWH, 1st ed., p.1170)
1961 Apr 27, United Kingdom granted Sierra Leone independence.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(SFC, 3/11/98, p.A10)(HN, 4/27/98)
1963 Apr 27, San Francisco real estate developer Marvin L. Sheldon said he wants no negroes in any of the homes he has built in Golden Gate Heights. He recently rejected a $39,950 offer by Wilt Chamberlain, star of the San Francisco Warriors, for a home.
1963 Apr 27, Cuban premier Fidel Castro arrived in Moscow.
1965 Apr 27, RC Duncan patented "Pampers," a disposable diaper.
1965 Apr 27, Edward R. Murrow (b.1908), newscaster (Person to Person), died of cancer in Pawling, N.Y. He had filed radio broadcast from London during the WW II German air raids. In 1986 A.M. Sperber authored "Murrow: His Life and Times."
(AP, 4/27/05)(SFC, 2/10/06, p.E11)(WSJ, 12/1/07, p.W10)
1967 Apr 27, Expo '67 was officially opened in Montreal by Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson. The urban theme park, La Ronde, was built on the Ile Sainte-Helene for the exposition and continues on to today. The Expo featured the big-screen, multi-projector film Polar Life. This led to the formation of Multiscreen Corporation and eventually IMAX.
(Hem., 7/95, p.129)(Hem., 3/97, p.81)(AP, 4/27/97)
1967 Apr 27, Rocky Marciano (1923-1969), American heavyweight champion, retired as the undefeated boxing champ.
(http://tinyurl.com/nqhtzs)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Marciano)
1967 Apr 27, It was disclosed that an employee at the San Francisco Mint had walked out of the facility at least two months earlier with a 21-pound gold bar valued at $12,000.
1968 Apr 27, In San Francisco Muhammad Ali spoke in front of some 15,000 anti-war and anti-racist demonstrators at Civic Center Plaza saying: "any intelligent white woman and white man" doesn't want a "Kinky haired Negro" marrying into his or her family. Neither, he added, did any intelligent "so-called Negro" want his children marrying whites.
1968 Apr 27, In the Netherlands part of a group of Catholic radicals left their own party and formed the Political Party of Radicals (PPR). The party dissolved in 1991.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Party_Radicals)
1969 Apr 27, Gen. Rene Barrientos (b.1919), military president of Bolivia, died in a helicopter crash.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Barrientos_Ortu%C3%B1o)
1971 Apr 27, In South Korea Kim Dae-jung, a serious challenger to Park's dictatorship, nearly defeated Park in the presidential election. After the stunning election outcome, Park revised the constitution to guarantee himself victory in future elections.
(AP, 10/24/07)(http://tinyurl.com/569aqp)
1972 Apr 27, Apollo 16 returned to Earth.
(www.solarviews.com/eng/apo16.htm)
1972 April 27, The German opposition took advantage of the crumbling Bundestag majority of the social-liberal coalition to bring a vote of no-confidence against Willy Brandt. In a secret vote, Rainer Barzel failed to achieve the required majority in the Bundestag and Willy Brandt remained Federal Chancellor.
(http://tinyurl.com/dgyyl)
1972 Apr 27, Kwame Nkrumah (62), former president of Ghana, died in Romania of cancer.
(http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/09/19/150104.php)
1973 Apr 27, Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray resigned after it was revealed that he had handed over bureau files on the Watergate burglary to the Nixon White House.
1975 Apr 27, Saigon was encircled by North Vietnamese troops. NVA fire rockets into downtown civilian areas as the city erupts into chaos and widespread looting.
(HN, 4/27/99)(www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1969.html)
1976 Apr 27, Jimmy Carter clinched the Democratic presidential nomination by beating Henry "Scoop" Jackson and Morris Udall in the Pennsylvania primary.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/timeline/index.html)(Econ, 4/12/08, p.31)
1978 Apr 27, Convicted Watergate defendant John D. Ehrlichman was released from an Arizona prison after serving 18 months.
1978 Apr 27, In West Virginia 51 construction workers plunged to their deaths when a scaffold inside a cooling tower at the nuclear Pleasants Power Station on Willow Island fell 168 feet to the ground.
(AP, 4/27/98)(http://historicmonroe.org/corp/willow-island.htm)
1978 Apr 27, The Afghanistan revolution began. There was a leftist coup. Afghanistan armed forces seized power. Pres. Mohammed Daud Khan was killed and Nur Mohammad Tarakai was installed as president. Babrak Karmal became his deputy Prime Minister. It was the first country in South Asia to fall while under communist rule. Assadulah Sarawary became the secret police chief under the Tarakai regime. In 2006 he faced war crime charges. In 2008 Afghan authorities announced they had found mass graves containing the remains of ex-president Mohammad Daud Khan and 17 family members and associates. In 2009 Daud Khan was reburied along with family members on a hillside overlooking the mountains that surround Kabul.
(HN, 4/27/98)(WSJ, 9/20/01, p.A12)(Econ, 1/21/06, p.42)(AP, 8/17/08)(AP, 12/4/08)(AP, 3/17/09)
1982 Apr 27, The trial of John W. Hinckley Jr., who had shot four people, including President Reagan, began in Washington. The trial ended with Hinckley's acquittal by reason of insanity.
1983 Apr 27, Nolan Ryan became the strikeout king (3,509), passing Walter Johnson.
(www.astrosdaily.com/history/sound/f.html)
1983 Apr 27, SF Mayor Diane Feinstein overwhelmingly defeated a recall attempt.
1983 Apr 27, In San Diego, Ca., Philip Buell, age 33 months, died from injuries of a fall while under the care of Ken Marsh. In 1984 Marsh was convicted of murder. He was freed in 2004, after spending 21 years in prison, before it was proven that he had been wrongfully convicted. In 2005 state prosecutors ruled that he should be compensated $756,000 for the time spent in prison.
(SFC, 12/10/05, p.B2)(http://freekenmarsh.com/declarations.html)
1984 Apr 27, In Oregon Billy Gilley Jr. (28) murdered his parents and a sister (11) with a baseball bat and ran away with his other sister Jody (16). She soon contacted the police and Billy was arrested. In 2008 Kathryn Harrison authored "While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family."
1986 Apr 27, A video pirate calling himself "Captain Midnight" interrupted a movie on Home Box Office with a printed message protesting de-scrambling fees. Captain Midnight turned out to be John R. MacDougall of Florida, who was fined and placed on probation.
1986 Apr 27, In Ukraine the town of Pripyat was evacuated some 36 hours following the worst nuclear disaster in history.
1987 Apr 27, The US Justice Department barred Austrian President Kurt Waldheim from entering the US, saying he aided in the deportation and execution of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II.
1988 Apr 27, The US Senate approved a sweeping trade bill, 63-36, falling short of the two-thirds vote needed to override a threatened veto by President Reagan.
1989 Apr 27, In China more than 150,000 students and workers calling for democracy marched, cheered and sang as they took over Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.
1989 Apr 27, In South Africa Frans "Ting-Ting" Masango (1958-2009), an anti-apartheid activist, was sentenced to death following the historic "Delmas Four" trial. He was released in 1991 after the ANC was unbanned. In 2008 Peter Harris authored "In A Different Time, the Story of the Delmas Four."
(www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=802399)(AP, 9/21/09)
1990 Apr 27, The aperture door of the Hubble Space Telescope was opened by ground controllers as the space shuttle Discovery, which had carried the Hubble into orbit, prepared to return home.
1991 Apr 27, A group of 250 Kurds became the first refugees to move into a new US-built camp in northern Iraq.
1992 Apr 27, Olivier Messiaen (b.1908), French composer, died. His work included the 1983 opera "St. Francis d'Assise."
(WSJ, 10/3/02, p.D6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Messiaen)
1992 Apr 27, The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed in Belgrade by the Republic of Serbia and its lone ally, Montenegro.
1992 Apr 27, Russia and 12 other former Soviet republics won entry into the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
1993 Apr 27, After a hiatus of more than four months, Israeli and Arab delegates resumed Middle East peace talks in Washington, D.C.
1993 Apr 27, Eritrea declared itself an independent state.
(www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/hornafrica.html#eri)
1994 Apr 27, Former President Richard M. Nixon was remembered at an outdoor funeral service attended by all five of his successors at the Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, Calif.
1995 Apr 27, Former Orange County, Calif., Treasurer Robert Citron pleaded guilty to six counts of defrauding investors in the county investment pool.
1995 Apr 27, Willem Frederik Hermans (b.1921), Dutch author, died. His 1966 novel "Beyond Sleep" was considered to be one of the founding works of modern Dutch literature. In 2007 an English translation became available.
(WSJ, 1/7/07, p.P8)(http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Frederik_Hermans)
1996 Apr 27, William Egan Colby (76), CIA Director, disappeared while canoeing near his waterfront home in southern Maryland. His body was found 8 days later. In 2003 John Prados authored "Lost Crusador," a biography of Colby.
(WSJ, 6/5/03, p.D8)(www.arlingtoncemetery.net/wcolby.htm)
1996 Apr 27, In Lebanon tens of thousands of refugees streamed home to southern Lebanon after a U.S.-brokered cease-fire silenced the guns in the 16-day Israel-Hezbollah war. The World Bank, which had committed $300 million to rebuilding Lebanon, will consider if more money is needed after the Israeli blitz.
(SFC, 5/4/96, P.A-8)(AP, 4/27/97)
1996 Apr 27, The southern Iranian town of Baft, 350 miles Southeast of Tehran, was invaded by millions of cockroaches, locusts, and grasshoppers.
(SFC, 4/27/96, p.A-7)
1996 Apr 27, As many as 590 million voters will participate in elections for three days of balloting held over nearly two weeks in India. It will determine the pace of reforms and serve as a referendum on the recent corruption scandals.
1997 Apr 27, President Clinton, along with former presidents George Bush and Jimmy Carter, helped polish gritty city streets in Philadelphia as they launched the Summit for America's Future, a three-day gathering on community service.
1997 Apr 27, A Texas militia group, called Republic of Texas, took 2 hostages at the Davis Mountain Resort community in a standoff with 300 police officers. They advocated independence for the state. The hostages were released later the next day in exchange for a jailed comrade, but the standoff continued. Richard McLaren and Robert Otto were later captured, convicted and sentenced to 99 and 50 years in prison.
(WSJ, 4/29/97, p.A1)(SFC, 4/29/97, p.A1)(AP, 4/27/98)
1997 Apr 27, In Hong Kong the Tsing Ma Bridge that connects the mainland part of Hong Kong with the islet of Chek Lap Kok was opened. It was hailed as the longest road-and-rail suspension bridge in the world.
1997 Apr 27, In Mexico two federal police agents, Roberto Espinoza and Marco Vasquez, were found shot dead with signs of torture in Mexico city. They had been investigating Amado Carrillo, Mexico's most powerful drug lord.
1998 Apr 27, A Pentagon panel said remains of the Vietnam veteran in the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery should be exhumed to determine whether they belonged to Air Force 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie, as his family believed. The remains were later positively identified as Blassie's.
1998 Apr 27, A Pentagon panel said the remains of the Vietnam veteran in the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery should be exhumed to determine whether they belonged to Air Force 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie, as his family believed. The remains were later positively identified as Blassie's.
1998 Apr 27, In Arlington, Washington, a fire at a 90-year-old building, used as a home for the elderly, killed 7 residents.
1998 Apr 27, Florida teenagers Bryan Donahue and William Dodge (aged 17 and 16) beat and kicked to death a gay man, Steven Goedereis (29), who had called one of them "beautiful." The teenagers were convicted of 2nd and 3rd degree murder in 1999.
(http://tinyurl.com/yb7asxzd)(SFC, 6/15/99, p.A6)
1998 Apr 27, Carlos Castaneda (72), author, died. His 1968 thesis: "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge," published by the Univ. of Calif. Press (1968), became an int'l. best seller. In 1997 his ex-wife Margaret Runyan Castaneda authored "A Magical Journey With Carlos Castaneda." In 2000 Richard DeMille authored "Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory." In 2003 Amy Wallace, Castaneda's lover in the 1970s, authored "The Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life With Carlos Castaneda."
(SFC, 6/19/98, p.A2)(SSFC, 8/24/03, p.E2)
1998 Apr 27, The UN extended security sanctions against Iraq but agreed to reviews every 60 days. It was earlier reported that Iraq recently had executed 1,500 political prisoners.
1998 Apr 27, Afghanistan peace talks between the Taliban and its opponents were scheduled to begin in Pakistan.
1998 Apr 27, In Cuba Canada's Prime Minister Chretien urged Fidel Castro to release four leading dissidents. It was reported that about 350 political prisoners were currently held.
1998 Apr 27, In Denmark some 550,000 workers walked of their jobs after unions turned down a compromise contract. The unions called for a 6th week of paid vacation.
1998 Apr 27, In India the hunger strike that began Mar 10 ended as police forced the Tibetan strikers to be fed intravenously as Gen'l Fu Quanyou of China began talks with Indian officials. One Tibetan exile set himself on fire and was not expected to survive.
1998 Apr 27, In Japan a court ruled that the government must compensate 3 South Korean women forced into sexual slavery during WW II, and awarded the women $2,300 each.
1998 Apr 27, In Kosovo the Yugoslav army clashed with ethnic Albanians and 3 insurgents were killed. Albanian reports said up to a dozen were slain and that none of them were militants.
1998 Apr 27, From Venezuela it was reported that Hugo Chavez, leader of the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), was campaigning for the office of president. He led a 1992 failed coup and was jailed for 2 years.
1999 Apr 27, A week after the Columbine High School massacre, President Clinton called for new gun control measures, saying, "People's lives are at stake here."
1999 Apr 27, The US Pentagon announced a call for 33,102 reservists for active duty in Kosovo.
1999 Apr 27, A federal grand jury indicted ten top political figures in Arkansas for corruption. Nick Wilson, the senior state senator, was indicted as the ring leader of a group that diverted state money.
1999 Apr 27, In Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature agreed on a plan to allow children in the lowest-rated schools to use state vouchers for private schools.
1999 Apr 27, Al Hirt, "The King of the Trumpet," died in New Orleans at age 76.
1999 Apr 27, In Indonesia Pres. Habibie announced plans for a ballot on independence on Aug 8. Anti-independence militiamen rejected the plans.
1999 Apr 27, A NATO bomb missed a targeted army barracks and killed at 20 people, half of them children, in a residential area of Surdulica, Serbia.
(SFC, 4/28/99, p.A10)(SFC, 4/28/99, p.A14)
1999 Apr 27, Up to 5,000 ethnic Albanians entered Macedonia and many more were said to be following. Another 2,000 entered at the Lojane border post.
1999 Apr 27, Near the town of Meja Yugoslav troops executed over 100 men from a caravan of fleeing refugees.
2000 Apr 27, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani disclosed that he had prostate cancer. He later bowed out of the US Senate race against Hillary Rodham Clinton.
2000 Apr 27, In Colombia a riot broke out at Bogota's El Modelo federal prison after an inmate's mutilated body was found in a sewer pipe. 26 people were killed over the next 24 hours in fighting between paramilitary and common criminals.
2000 Apr 27, Some 288 migrant Haitians were rescued from Flamingo Cay in the Bermuda Islands after their boat ran aground. 2-14 of the migrants died of exposure and dehydration while awaiting rescue.
(SFC, 4/28/00, p.D4)(SFC, 4/29/00, p.A12)
2000 Apr 27, In Iran Islamic hard-liners closed 3 more newspapers, including the daily run by the brother of Pres. Khatami.
2000 Apr 27, In Uganda workers in Ggaba, a residential area south of Kampala, exhumed the bodies of 55 more people associated with the Movement for the Restoration of Ten Commandments. Total deaths stood at 979.
2001 Apr 27, The US GDP was reported at 2% growth due to buying by American consumers. The DJIA rose 117 to 10,810. The Nasdaq rose 40 to 2,075.
2001 Apr 27, It was reported that IBM scientists had assembled transistors using carbon nanotubules. The structures were first discovered in 1991 by Sumio Iijima of NEC Fundamental Research Labs in Tsukuba, Japan.
(SFC, 4/27/01, p.B1,4)
2001 Apr 27, The US National Arbor Day Foundation announced that the oak tree was nominated as the national tree in its sponsored vote.
2001 Apr 27, Four students from Newton, Mass., were killed near Sussex, New Brunswick, when their bus crashed while enroute to a music festival in Halifax. At least 37 others were injured.
2001 Apr 27, In Nigeria 53 African states signed a joint declaration to boost health spending to 15% to fight AIDS.
2001 Apr 27, In Puerto Rico the US Navy resumed bombing exercises on Vieques Island where 14 protesters were arrested.
(SFC, 4/28/01, p.A3)(AP, 4/27/02)
2001 Apr 27, In Russia John Edward Tobin (24), a US Fullbright scholar, was convicted of possession and distribution of marijuana and sentenced to three years and one month in prison. Police had acknowledged making up evidence. The prosecutor said she was ashamed to handle the case. Tobin, who maintained his innocence, was paroled and released last August.
(SFC, 4/28/01, p.A10)(AP, 4/27/02)
2002 Apr 27, Derek Lowe (news) of the Boston Red Sox pitched a no-hitter against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, 10-0.
2002 Apr 27, South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth arrived at the international space station for an eight-day, seven-night cruise that cost him $20 million.
2002 Apr 27, In Laughlin, Nev., members of the Hells Angels clashed with members of the Mongol gang and 3 people were killed in a shootout at Harrah's. Some 80,000 bikers were in town for the annual Laughlin River Run party. Investigations led to arrests on Dec 3, 2003.
(SSFC, 4/28/02, p.A9)(SFC, 12/5/03, p.A25)
2002 Apr 27, Ruth Handler (85), co-founder of Mattel and creator of the Barbie doll (1959), died.
(SSFC, 4/28/02, p.A2)
2002 Apr 27, In Afghanistan 25 people were killed in Gardez from rockets fired by Padsha Khan Zadran in a bid to take the provincial capital. The attack came just before Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld landed at Bagram Air Base.
(SSFC, 4/28/02, p.A17)(WSJ, 4/29/02, p.A1)
2002 Apr 27, China's VP Hu Jintao (59), heir apparent, stopped in Hawaii on his way to meet with Pres. Bush.
2002 Apr 27, At least 200,000 protesters marched in cities around France in anger at the electoral showing of Jean-Marie Le Pen.
2002 Apr 27, A UN team scheduled to arrive in Israel for an inspection at Jenin was postponed for a day over differences in the teams' objectives.
2002 Apr 27, Palestinian gunmen attacked the Israeli settlement of Adora and killed 4 people including a 5-year-old girl. 3 gunmen escaped but one was later found and killed in a nearby village.
2003 Apr 27, Kevin Millwood pitched his first career no-hitter to lead the Philadelphia Phillies over the San Francisco Giants 1-0.
2003 Apr 27, Peter Stone (73), screen and stage writer died in New York.
2003 Apr 27, In Argentina former President Carlos Menem (72) finished first in presidential elections but failed to win an outright victory in his comeback bid, setting up a runoff vote with Nestor Kirchner, governor of Patagonia.
(AP, 4/28/03)(SFC, 4/28/03, A3)
2003 Apr 27, In China's central Hunan province a wagon overturned and tumbled into a gully, killing 16 people and injuring seven others. In Beijing theaters, cafes and karaoke bars were closed as 126 new SARS cases were reported. Total confirmed cases in China rose to 2,914 with 131 deaths. 26 of China's 31 provinces were infected.
(AP, 4/27/03)(WSJ, 4/28/03, A1)(SFC, 4/28/03, A1)
2003 Apr 27, In Iraq Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin al-Yasin (6 of clubs), chief Iraqi liaison with UN weapons inspectors, surrendered to US forces. The US military arrested the self-anointed mayor of Baghdad, Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi, reflecting US determination to brook no interlopers in its effort to build a consensus for administering Iraq.
(AP, 4/28/03)(AP, 4/27/04)
2003 Apr 27, In Indonesia a bomb ripped through a crowded terminal at Jakarta's main airport, wounding 11 people and sending hundreds of passengers fleeing from the building.
2003 Apr 27, In Paraguay elections were held for a successor to Pres. Luis Gonzalez Macchi, a former Senate leader appointed president in March 1999 after the resignation of Raul Cubas amid a political crisis stemming from the assassination of the country's vice president. Colorado Party leader Nicanor Duarte (49) extended his party's 55-year grip on power, winning a presidential election by handily defeating two challengers seeking to tap building anger over the country's deepening economic crisis.
(AP, 4/26/03)(AP, 4/28/03)(SFC, 4/28/03, A12)
2003 Apr 27, In Yemen parliamentary elections for 301 seats were marred by gunfights that wounded at least 15 people.
(SFC, 4/28/03, A12)
2004 Apr 27, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, of Pennsylvania, beat back a tough primary threat, barely defeating conservative congressman Pat Toomey.
2004 Apr 27, It was reported that ten US contractors in Iraq have paid over $300 million in penalties since 2000 to resolve various allegations.
2004 Apr 27, The Chinese government said it had shut down a U.S. visa information center in Shanghai because of complaints of overcharging.
2004 Apr 27, It was reported that China planned to consolidate some 35,000 rural cooperatives over the next 3 years to about 3,000. The government estimated cooperative bad loans at 26% of the total loans.
2004 Apr 27, In Indonesia gunmen in Ambon killed two paramilitary police officers and critically wounded a third and a Muslim man later was incinerated by a bomb explosion, bringing the death toll since Sunday to 24.
2004 Apr 27, US troops fought gunbattles with militiamen overnight near the city of Najaf, killing 64 gunmen and destroying an anti-aircraft system belonging to the insurgents.
2004 Apr 27, Iraqi police moved into the streets of the besieged city of Fallujah following hours of pounding by US warplanes and artillery on Sunni insurgents.
2004 Apr 27, Israeli troops killed two Hamas fugitives and seriously wounded a third in a gun battle in the West Bank Tulkarem refugee camp.
2004 Apr 27, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi arrived in Brussels, his first trip to Europe in 15 years. Gadhafi sought "full normalization" of relations and entry to the aid and trade program the EU runs with countries around the Mediterranean, including Israel.
2004 Apr 27, Peruvian police retook control of an Andean town, a day after highland Indians beat to death the mayor, accusing him of corruption.
2004 Apr 27, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and EU officials signed an accord extending the EU-Russia partnership accord to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta, which join May 1.
2004 Apr 27, In Damascus 4 gunmen detonated a bomb placed under a car before firing bullets and grenades at Syrian security forces. Hours later police found weapons including rocket propelled grenades and guns during the raid in the nearby town of Khan al-Sheih.
2005 Apr 27, Touting technology as a way to solve the country's energy problems, President Bush called for construction of more nuclear power plants and urged Congress to give tax breaks for fuel-efficient hybrid and clean-diesel cars.
2005 Apr 27, The Airbus A380, the world's largest jetliner, made its maiden flight.
2005 Apr 27, Abdus Samad Azad (83), a former foreign minister and Bangladeshi independence hero, died in Dhaka.
2005 Apr 27, The Dominican Republic education secretary said all public elementary and secondary schools will institute mandatory English classes by the next school year.
2005 Apr 27, Hundreds of pro-democracy activists protested in 15 Egyptian cities and towns, drawing out large numbers of riot police who briefly detained 75 protesters.
2005 Apr 27, The world's largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, completed a maiden flight in France that took it over the Pyrenees mountains.
2005 Apr 27, Police fired on protesters demanding the release of detainees loyal to Haiti's ousted president, killing at least five demonstrators.
2005 Apr 27, Indian troops killed nine suspected Islamic militants in three separate clashes in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
2005 Apr 27, Lamia Abed Khadouri al-Sagri, a member of the National Assembly and of outgoing premier Ayad Allawi's Iraqi List party, was killed in her house in the Hay Aour neighborhood in eastern Baghdad.
2005 Apr 27, Vladimir Putin became the first Kremlin leader to visit Israel, capping a historic rapprochement between two nations that once faced each other as bitter enemies across the Cold War divide.
2005 Apr 27, In northwestern Sri Lanka an intercity passenger train collided with a bus that tried to dash through a railroad crossing, killing 35 people.
2005 Apr 27, A UN tribunal in Tanzania sentenced Mika Muhimana, a former local government official in western Rwanda, to imprisonment for the rest of his life for shooting to death and raping mostly Tutsi victims during the 1994 genocide.
2005 Apr 27, Opposition supporters protesting the presidential election victory by the son of Togo's longtime dictator threw Molotov cocktails and rocks during street clashes with security forces in the capital, leaving at least six people dead and some foreign embassies damaged.
2006 Apr 27, The Bush administration announced that it had reached a tentative agreement with Canada to settle the long-running trade battle over softwood lumber.
2006 Apr 27, Alberto Gonzales, the US Attorney General, said police nationwide had arrested 9,037 people in a roundup of fugitives from April 17 to 23, including over 1,100 sex offenders.
2006 Apr 27, The US states joined by environmentalists sued the federal government to compel it to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions blamed for global warming.
2006 Apr 27, The publisher of the teen novel "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" pulled the book off the market after its author, Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan acknowledged that numerous passages had been lifted from another writer.
2006 Apr 27, In NYC construction began at the site of the World Trade Center on a project to build 5 towers by 2012.
2006 Apr 27, A fiery crash in the San Francisco's Castro District killed one person and left at least 8 vehicle gutted.
2006 Apr 27, Austria, in its role as current president of the EU, began a poster campaign called "Temptress Europe" designed to reawaken Europeans to the continent's "sensuous" side.
2006 Apr 27, Thousands of Bulgarians demonstrated against a deal to allow US troops to use military facilities in the country.
2006 Apr 27, Canadian and US scientists reported success with an experimental vaccine against the Marburg virus in monkeys, even if the shot is given after infection.
2006 Apr 27, China's central bank raised interest rates by .27% in the government's strongest move yet to cool an economy verging on overheating. The news sent resource stocks, oil and commodity prices lower around the world.
(AP, 4/27/06)(Econ, 4/29/06, p.43)
2006 Apr 27, Liliana Gaviria (52), sister of the former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria (1990-1994), died in a botched kidnapping in the province of Risaralda, 110 miles west of Bogota. She was real estate agent and owner of a transport company. On Feb 26, 2010, Beatriz Villalba (25) was arrested after being under observation for four months. She had been conducting spying operations for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in Bogota. Prosecutors alleged that Villalba was in charge of buying a building and modifying a vehicle used in the abduction and transportation of Liliana Gaviria Trujillo. Gaviria's bodyguard was shot dead during the kidnapping in Pereira.
2006 Apr 27, Indian student doctors staged a one-day strike at state-run hospitals in New Delhi to protest government plans to boost quotas for the poor in top education institutes.
2006 Apr 27, Iran's UN ambassador denounced Israel's election as a vice-chair of the U.N. Disarmament Commission, calling the Jewish state a threat to peace in the Middle East.
2006 Apr 27, A sister of Iraq's new Sunni Arab vice president was killed in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad, a day after the politician called for the Sunni-dominated insurgency to be crushed by force. In southern Iraq a bomb blast rocked an Italian convoy at a base, killing three Italian soldiers and a Romanian.
2006 Apr 27, Israel's military intelligence chief said in a published interview that Iran has received its first batch of North Korean-made surface-to-surface missiles that put European countries within firing range.
2006 Apr 27, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at two cars in Gaza packed with rockets, killing one Islamic Jihad militant and critically wounding another.
2006 Apr 26, Malaysia's central bank raised its main interest rate by a quarter point to 3.5%.
2006 Apr 27, Reports from Myanmar and Thailand said Myanmar troops were waging their biggest military offensive in almost a decade and have uprooted more than 11,000 ethnic minority civilians in a campaign punctuated by torture, killings and the burning of villages.
2006 Apr 27, Nepal's communist rebels pledged to halt attacks for three months to give the Himalayan country a chance for peace as a new government takes over in the wake of bloody protests that forced the king to reinstate parliament.
2006 Apr 27, A Dutch agency said the number of reported cases of legal euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide in the Netherlands increased in 2005 for the third year in a row. Doctors reported 1,933 cases in 2005, up from 1,886 in 2004 and 1,815 in 2003.
2006 Apr 27, In Nigeria President Hu Jintao said China wants a "strategic partnership" with Africa, seeking to add a new political dimension to a blossoming economic romance. China agreed to commit $4 billion for infrastructure in exchange for 4 oil drilling licenses.
(Reuters, 4/27/06)(WSJ, 4/27/06, p.A1)
2006 Apr 27, Russia's Agriculture Ministry said it has banned all imports of poultry and poultry products in connection with violations of veterinary regulations. Moscow claimed to have found diseased chickens and insufficient veterinary monitoring on US poultry farms, but there were also Russia media reports linking the ban to the country's unhappiness over US President George W. Bush's decision to impose hefty tariffs on foreign steel imports.
2006 Apr 27, In South Korea state prosecutors requested an arrest warrant for Hyundai Motor Co. Chairman Chung Mong-koo amid a bribery and slush fund scandal that has rocked the large automaker.
2006 Apr 27, In Sri Lanka rebels said some 40,000 civilians fled homes in northeastern Sri Lanka to escape government airstrikes on Tamil rebel areas in recent days that have killed at least a dozen people. In northern Sri Lanka mine attacks killed five military personnel and wounded another five. Police found five headless corpses near Colombo.
2006 Apr 27, Turkey said it has deployed more than 30,000 additional troops in its predominantly Kurdish southeast and along its rugged border with Iraq and Iran to fight Kurdish guerrillas and stop them from coming across the frontier.
2006 Apr 27, The UN panel overseeing compensation for victims of Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait said the UN has paid out a $248 million installment to cover claims for losses and damages.
2007 Apr 27, President Bush and visiting Japanese PM Shinzo Abe threatened stronger punitive actions against North Korea if it reneged on a promise to padlock its sole nuclear reactor.
2007 Apr 27, The US dollar slid to a record low against the euro. The worst economic growth in four years raised concern that troubles in the US housing market will spread and throw the country into a recession before the year is out.
(Reuters, 4/28/07)(AP, 4/27/07)
2007 Apr 27, Randall Tobias, head of the Bush administration's foreign aid programs, abruptly resigned after his name surfaced in an investigation into a high-priced call-girl ring.
2007 Apr 27, The Pentagon said it had taken custody of Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, a senior al-Qaeda commander. Officials said al-Iraqi was handed over to the CIA in late 2006.
2007 Apr 27, The Ninth Circuit federal appeals court rebuffed a Bush administration effort to relax dolphin-safe labeling standards.
2007 Apr 27, The DJIA rose 15.44 to a record 13,120.94. Nasdaq rose 2.75 to 2,557.
2007 Apr 27, In Santa Cruz, Ca., Steven Harold Smith (50), a supervisor at a wastewater treatment plant, wounded his estranged wife, shot and killed a co-worker and then killed himself.
2007 Apr 27, Hundreds of Afghan soldiers and police retook the Giro district from the Taliban, pushing out militants who had seized the area in fierce fighting a day earlier.
2007 Apr 27, China's Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to phase out tax breaks and discounts on land and electricity for highly polluting industries, saying the country's environmental situation was grim and required urgent action.
2007 Apr 27, China said it has expelled five Americans who staged a protest against the Olympics on Mount Everest to challenge Chinese rule over the mountainous region.
2007 Apr 27, Estonia removed a Soviet war memorial from downtown Tallinn under cover of darkness, carrying out a plan that has rankled Russia and provoked protests that left one person dead and dozens injured.
2007 Apr 27, US-led forces detained nine suspected insurgents in raids aimed at al-Qaida in Iraq, including five in Mosul that has seen a recent rise in violence as militants fled there to escape a crackdown in Baghdad.
2007 Apr 27, Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was cleared in a high-profile corruption case involving bribing judges.
2007 Apr 27, Japan's Supreme Court upheld a ruling denying compensation to two Chinese women who were forced to work in military brothels during World War II. The court said that the women had no right to seek war compensation from Japan because of a 1972 agreement with China. The top court also overturned a lower court ruling awarding compensation to five Chinese who were forced to work for a Japanese construction company during the war.
2007 Apr 27, The UN Security Council lifted its embargo on Liberia's diamond exports, saying the west African nation has made progress in certifying the origin of its rough diamonds. A multi-day strike at the Firestone Rubber plantation in Liberia turned violent as police clashed with striking workers, leaving at least six people wounded.
(AFP, 4/27/07)(AP, 4/27/07)
2007 Apr 27, Nigeria's Supreme Court voided the removal of Joshua Dariye, a Plateau state governor, who fled London on money laundering charges in November 2004. In Nigeria police said 5 gunmen and two police officers were killed during an attempt to kidnap two foreign oil workers in the oil-rich city of Port Harcourt.
2007 Apr 27, An apparent US missile strike killed 4 people in Saidgi, a village in the North Waziristan of Pakistan near the Afghan border.
(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,269012,00.html)
2007 Apr 27, A Russian military helicopter crashed in Chechnya, killing all 18 people aboard, emergency officials said. There were conflicting reports about whether the craft was shot down.
2007 Apr 27, Mstislav Rostropovich (b.1927), master cellist, died. He had fought for the rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall.
2007 Apr 27, Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry said police had arrested 172 Islamic militants, some of whom had trained abroad as pilots so they could fly aircraft in attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil fields. A spokesman said all that remained in the plot "was to set the zero hour." More than $32.4 million was seized in the operation, one of the largest sweeps against terror cells in the kingdoms.
2007 Apr 27, A Spanish judge indicted three US soldiers in the 2003 death of Jose Couso, a Spanish journalist who was killed when their tank opened fire at a hotel in Baghdad.
2008 Apr 27, It was made public that Mars Inc. of McLean, Va., together with Berkshire Hathaway had agreed to acquire Wrigley Co. of Chicago, Ill., for about $23 billion. The deal closed on Oct 6.
(WSJ, 4/29/08, p.A1)(SFC, 10/7/08, p.D2)
2008 Apr 27, In Arizona a truck jammed with as many as 60 illegal immigrants crashed near Arizona City killing 4 people.
2008 Apr 27, In San Ramon, Ca., Kashmir Billon (42), a mortgage lender, was shot and killed. On May 1 Reginald Robinson (31) was charged with the murder. They were involved in a deal to sell a home to a fictitious person and leave a bank holding the bag.
(SFC, 5/2/08, p.B1)(SFC, 5/8/08, p.B1)
2008 Apr 27, Hal Stein, veteran jazz saxophonist and teacher, died at his home in Oakland, Ca. His career spanned the swing and bebop eras of jazz.
(SFC, 5/6/08, p.B5)
2008 Apr 27, Suspected Taliban militants attacked the Mujahideen Day parade attended by the Afghan president, unleashing automatic weapons fire that sent foreign dignitaries and senior members of the government fleeing for cover. 3 people, including a lawmaker, were killed and 8 were wounded. Pres. Karzai later appeared on television saying several suspects in the attack had been arrested. The Afghan government later accused the Pakistani intelligence service of organizing the plot to assassinate Pres. Karzai. Taliban militants attacked an Australian patrol with automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenades in southern Afghanistan, and the ensuing battle left one of the commandos dead and four others wounded.
(AP, 4/27/08)(Econ, 5/3/08, p.50)(SFC, 6/26/08, p.A10)
2008 Apr 27, President Rene Preval chose Ericq Pierre, an international banking official, to be the troubled country's next prime minister.
2008 Apr 27, Iraq's PM al-Maliki met with the Sunni Arab vice president to discuss reintegrating Sunni political parties into the Shiite-dominated government. Police said five people died in violence in Baghdad. Elsewhere in Baghdad, a suicide car bomber blew himself up at a security checkpoint in the eastern neighborhood of Zayouna killing three people and injuring nine. Shiite extremists lobbed rockets or mortar shells at the US protected Green Zone as American and Iraqi troops engaged militants in the most violent clashes in weeks in Baghdad. Abrams tanks were used to repel attacks on two army checkpoints, killing 22 militants in one clash. 16 other militants were killed in separate firefights. A US military statement said an unmanned drone had killed a total of five militants using Hellfire missiles in three separate engagements.
2008 Apr 27, A summit aimed at kick-starting Maghreb economic integration was disrupted when Moroccan and Algerian government ministers clashed over the disputed Western Sahara region.
2008 Apr 27, Hundreds of workers at Scotland's only oil refinery began a 48-hour strike. This forced BP PLC to shut a pipeline system that delivers almost a third of Britain's North Sea oil.
2008 Apr 27, A North Korean defector tried to set himself on fire to halt the Olympic torch relay through Seoul, while thousands of police guarded the flame from protesters blasting China's treatment of North Korean refugees. A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea for the first time in a decade across the heavily fortified border dividing the countries.
2008 Apr 27, In Sri Lanka Tiger rebels used aircraft to bomb military targets, dealing a psychological blow to security forces, as the two sides fought heavy ground battles.
2008 Apr 27, In Sudan China's state-owned China Water and Electric Corp (CWE) and Sino-Hydro signed a 400-million dollar (255-million euro) deal to raise the height of Sudan's oldest dam, in the southern Blue Nile state.
2009 Apr 27, America, Canada, Europe and Japan promised to cooperate on validating alternatives to using animals in medical research. An estimated 50-100 million animals were used in research annually around the world.
2009 Apr 27, Five members of the US Congress were arrested while protesting the expulsion of aid groups from Darfur in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC. The included Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, John Lewis of Georgia, Donna Edwards of Maryland and Lynn Woolsey of California.
2009 Apr 27, In Maryland an indictment named Metro Dream Homes founder Andrew Hamilton Williams Jr. (58) of Hollywood, Fla.; financial officer Michael Anthony Hickson (46) of Commack, N.Y.; president Isaac Jerome Smith (46) of Spotsylvania, Va.; and vice president Alvita Karen Gunn (31) of Hanover, Md., for defrauding over 1,000 people out of about $70 million. They were given 48 hours to turn themselves in. Investors were told they were investing in ATM machines, television advertising and calling card kiosks that would raise money for the mortgage payments. Prosecutors said those businesses never made any money.
2009 Apr 27, US cases of the deadly new flu strain rose to 40. Governments around the world acted to stem a possible flu pandemic, as a virus that has killed 149 people in Mexico and spread to North America was confirmed to have reached Europe. Spain's Health Ministry confirmed the country's first case of swine flu and said another 20 people are suspected of having the disease.
(Reuters, 4/27/09)(AP, 4/27/09)(WSJ, 4/28/09, p.A1)
2009 Apr 27, Conde Nast Publications closed its Portfolio magazine after less than 2 years due to a downturn in advertising.
(WSJ, 4/28/09, p.B8)
2009 Apr 27, General Motors Corp. said it will cut 21,000 US factory jobs by next year, phase out its storied Pontiac brand and ask the government to take more than half its stock in exchange for half of GM's government debt as part of a major restructuring that would leave current shareholders holding just 1 percent of the company.
2009 Apr 27, Ernie Barnes (b.1938), former American Football League player turned artist, died. He was named the official artist of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
2009 Apr 27, Afghan President Hamid Karzai vowed to change a law critics say legalizes marital rape to remove concerns that it violates human rights. Karzai also announced that he intended to run for re-election in the country's second ever presidential vote on August 20. In Kabul province 12 "terrorists" and a police official were killed during a clash. In the east, a roadside bomb killed four police.
2009 Apr 27, Belarus' authoritarian Pres. Lukashenko met with Pope Benedict XVI on his first trip to Western Europe since the European Union lifted a travel ban imposed in 1999 over his dismal human rights record. The EU lifted the ban to allow Lukashenko to attend an East-West summit in Prague, Czech Republic, in May.
(www.contracostatimes.com/nationandworld/ci_12237339)
2009 Apr 27, An international human rights group said elite soldiers in junta-ruled Guinea are taking advantage of an anti-corruption drive to rob, extort and beat intimidated civilians in the West African nation with impunity.
2009 Apr 27, In Japan Univ. of Wyoming professor Craig Arnold (41), an award-winning poet, was reported missing after he failed to return from a hike on the tiny island of Kuchinoerabu-jima, about 30 miles (50 km) off the coast of southern Kyushu island.
2009 Apr 27, In Kenya 2 men pleaded guilty in court to illegally possessing 1,500 pounds (700 kilograms) of elephant tusks in what was believed to be the largest seizure of illegal ivory in recent years. Rangers and police arrested the two, a Kenyan and a Tanzanian, on April 25, when the Kenya Wildlife Service acted on a tip about planned ivory smuggling in Amboseli National Park.
2009 Apr 27, In Kosovo Serbs protesting the building of homes for ethnic Albanians in northern Kosovo threw two hand grenades and fired gunshots at European Union police officers, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades to drive the crowd away.
2009 Apr 27, In Mexico an earthquake of magnitude 5.6 was centered near Chilpancingo, about 130 miles (210 km) southwest of Mexico City. 2 women aged 67 and 75 died of heart attacks during or shortly after the earthquake, and four homes and a perimeter wall collapsed in and around the resort of Acapulco.
2009 Apr 27, In Tijuana, Mexico, 7 police officers were assassinated in about an hour's time in what authorities said was a coordinated effort. 4 of the officers, three men and a woman, were found amid more than 200 bullet shells.
2009 Apr 27, In Pakistan Taliban militants declared their peace deal with the Pakistani government "worthless" after authorities deployed helicopters and artillery against hide-outs of Islamist guerrillas seeking to extend their grip along the Afghan border. Paramilitary troops killed 20 suspected militants, and a total of 46 have died since the operation began. A remote-controlled bomb exploded near a police patrol, killing an officer and a passer-by while wounding five other police in the northwest Lakki Marwat area.
2009 Apr 27, Palestinian officials established formal ties with Venezuela and opened a diplomatic mission in the South American country.
2009 Apr 27, Peru's government said that it has granted political asylum to Manuel Rosales, a Venezuelan opposition leader, who faced corruption allegations in his homeland but claimed to be persecuted by leftist President Hugo Chavez.
2009 Apr 27, A Moscow district police chief opened fire on the street and in a supermarket, killing three people and wounding seven others, four of them critically. Maj. Denis Yevsyukov killed a cab driver and wounded several passers-by in the street, then gunned down a cashier and a customer in the market. He then held two dozen people hostage for several hours and shot at police officers before they disarmed and detained him. On Feb 19, 2010, a Moscow court sentenced the police precinct chief to life in prison for the drunken shooting spree.
2009 Apr 27, The Sri Lankan government, under intense pressure to prevent civilian deaths, said it would immediately stop airstrikes and artillery attacks but rejected calls for a cease-fire in its war against the Tamil Tiger rebels.
2009 Apr 27, In southern Thailand suspected Muslim rebels killed 10 civilians in a flurry of attacks, just ahead of the fifth anniversary of a bloody assault by security forces against militants at the Krue Se mosque.
2009 Apr 27, In Turkey a five-hour police shootout with a leftist militant in Istanbul left three people dead, including the militant described as a top member of a group tied to the Kurdish separatist PKK. The militant was identified as Orhan Yilmazkaya, one of three top members of the Revolutionary Headquarters.
2010 Apr 27, It was reported that Fritz Maytag, owner of the SF-based Anchor Brewing Co., has sold the company to the Griffon Group, run by Keith Greggor and Tony Foglio.
2010 Apr 27, The Oklahoma Senate voted to override Gov. Brad. Henry's veto of two abortion bills, one that an abortion-rights group has said would be among the nation's strictest measures against the procedure. On July 19 Oklahoma County District Judge Noma Gurich granted an injunction blocking enforcement of the abortion law.
(SFC, 4/28/10, p.A6)(SFC, 7/20/10, p.A4)
2010 Apr 27, A Texas inmate, Samuel Bustamante (40), was executed evening for fatally stabbing an illegal immigrant during an attempted robbery a dozen years ago. Bustamante was convicted of the 1998 slaying of Rafael Alvarado (27), a Mexican national in Fort Bend County, southwest of Houston, who became a target of what Bustamante and some of his friends called "shopping trips" where they would hunt illegal immigrants, then beat and rob them.
2010 Apr 27, In eastern Afghanistan a NATO soldier was killed following a gun attack.
2010 Apr 27, Brazil, a UN Security Council member, demanded that Iran guarantee its nuclear program has no military aims, saying the crisis has become the single most important security issue in the world.
2010 Apr 27, British researchers reported that a single sigmoidoscopy between ages 55 and 64 can reduce deaths by at least 43%.
2010 Apr 27, Czech Republic vice premier Martin Bartak said the government has approved an agreement with the United States on scientific cooperation in defense research.
2010 Apr 27, Germany officially opened its first offshore wind farm in the North Sea after years of delays and technical problems. The $340 million test field, Alpha Ventus, consisted of 12 windmills.
2010 Apr 27, India's foreign ministry said a female diplomat, Mrs. Gupta (53), working in the Indian embassy in Islamabad has been arrested on charges of spying for Pakistan. Strikes to protest rising food and fuel prices shut down air, rail and road traffic in several parts of India.
(AFP, 4/27/10)(SSFC, 5/2/10, p.M3)
2010 Apr 27, Two Iraqi soldiers were killed in an overnight mortar attack on a security station in a Shiite neighborhood in northern Baghdad.
2010 Apr 27, In Kyrgyzstan the leader of the interim authorities said ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev has been charged with organizing mass killings in the deadly uprising that forced him from office in this Central Asian country earlier this month.
2010 Apr 27, The Mexican Senate passed a measure to make soldiers accountable to civilian courts for abuses involving civilians, and ensure the use of troops in actions like the offensive against drug cartels is temporary. Gunmen attacked a caravan of rights observers and leftists near the restive town of San Juan Copala in southern Oaxaca state, killing Finnish human rights worker Jyri Jaakkola and Mexican political activist Beatriz Carino Trujillo. An Italian man and a Belgian man were still unaccounted for more than 24 hours after the ambush. The National Network of Human Rights Civic Organizations said another Finn, three Mexicans and two journalists from the Mexican magazine Contralinea were also missing. The army reported that it freed 16 hostages at a house in Sabinas Hidalgo, a town near the northern city of Monterrey. One of the hostages was a 1-year-old child. 4 inmates were killed when an armed gang stormed a prison in the northern town of Altamira. 29 officers in four patrol vehicles were detained in the resort city of Acapulco after being stopped and searched by navy personnel. Searchers found a 33-pound (15-kg) bag of marijuana in one of the vehicles and 36 non-regulation firearms overall, mostly machine pistols and assault rifles.
(AP, 4/27/10)(AP, 4/29/10)(AP, 4/28/10)(AP, 4/29/10)
2010 Apr 27, In Nepal Oh Eun-sun (44), a South Korean mountaineer, became the first woman to scale the world's 14 highest mountains, crawling on all fours as she reached the last summit. She reached the summit of Annapurna 13 years after she scaled her first Himalayan mountain, Gasherbrum II, in 1997. She scaled Everest in 2004.
2010 Apr 27, Pakistani troops killed 13 suspected insurgents in the Orakzai tribal region near Afghanistan. 8 militants died after a battle over a checkpoint in the Bezod area of Orakzai. Airstrikes killed five more in the Kasha area.
2010 Apr 27, Sierra Leone launched a program to provide free health care to mothers and children in the West African nation, which suffers from high rates of maternal and child mortality. UNICEF says it will distribute $6 million in medicines.
2010 Apr 27, Singapore previewed the Marina Bay Sands (MBS) casino, owned and operated by the Las Vegas Sands Corp.
(http://tinyurl.com/4lqzq5g)(Econ, 2/26/11, p.72)
2010 Apr 27, In Somalia a truck full of explosives pulled up to a new AU base in Mogadishu. Two soldiers opened fire on the truck and were wounded along with 2 civilians when the explosion went off. The suicide attacker was the only one to die in the attack. Later at least 14 civilians were killed during a prolonged battle between government soldiers and Islamic insurgents.
2010 Apr 27, In Thailand anti-government protesters forced a rush hour shutdown of Bangkok's busy elevated train system and promised to expand protests that have plunged the Thai capital into chaos by sending teams of demonstrators throughout the city.
2010 Apr 27, Ukraine's parliament erupted into chaos as deputies scuffled and hurled smoke bombs during a tumultuous session that ratified a bitterly contested deal with Russia extending a naval base lease.
2011 Apr 27, President Barack Obama produced a detailed Hawaii birth certificate in an extraordinary attempt to bury the issue of where he was born and confirm his legitimacy to hold office.
(http://tinyurl.com/3fe52jg)
2011 Apr 27, Obama administration officials said Leon Panetta (72) would be named as the new US Sec. of Defense, Gen. David Petraeus would head the CIA and that Gen. John Allen would assume military command in Afghanistan.
2011 Apr 27, US Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke held his inaugural post-policy meeting news conference. The Federal Reserve committed to keep interest rates low.
2011 Apr 27, The Indiana state House approved a bill to cut $3 million in federal money for the Planned Parenthood organization. The state Senate approved the bill earlier this month. Rep. Gov. Mitch Daniels signed the bill on May 10.
(SFC, 4/28/11, p.A6)(SFC, 4/30/11, p.A7)(SFC, 5/11/11, p.A4)
2011 Apr 27, Dozens of tornadoes spawned by a powerful storm system wiped out neighborhoods across a wide swath of the South, killing at least 350 people in the deadliest outbreak in nearly 40 years. Alabama had 254 deaths, 34 in Mississippi, 34 in Tennessee, 15 in Georgia, 8 in Arkansas, 5 in Virginia and one in Kentucky.
(AP, 4/28/11)(AP, 4/29/11)(AFP, 4/30/11)
2011 Apr 27, The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency reported three storm-related deaths overnight from severe weather that damaged homes, downed trees and power lines and sparked flash flooding in at least 23 counties across the state.
(Reuters, 4/27/11)
2011 Apr 27, The city of Altoona, Pa., enacted a 60-day name change to "POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold," after the latest film by sarcastic documentarian Morgan Spurlock, in order to make some money and to help Spurlock make a point about the proliferation of advertising in American life.
2011 Apr 27, Health products giant Johnson & Johnson said it will buy US-Swiss medical device maker Synthes Inc. for $21.3 billion, greatly increasing its share of the market for surgical trauma equipment and orthopedic implants.
2011 Apr 27, In Afghanistan 8 American troops and a US contractor died after Afghan military pilot Ahmad Gul (48) opened fire during a meeting at Kabul airport.
2011 Apr 27, In Australia University of Sydney officials said an anonymous American donor has given "Jeune fille endormie, a 1935 Pablo Picasso painting worth millions, to the university on the condition the school use proceeds from the painting's sale to fund scientific research. The portrait was donated last year.
2011 Apr 27, In the Bahamas more than 100 people were left homeless after a fire wrecked a crowded shantytown on Abaco Island filled mostly with Haitian migrants.
2011 Apr 27, In Belarus a Minsk court found Dmitry Bondarenko guilty of organizing a rally protesting election results last December that attracted some 50,000 people. He was sentenced to two years in prison for his part in organizing the rally.
2011 Apr 27, In Costa Rica former Pres. Miguel Angel Rodriguez (b.1940) was sentenced to 5 years in prison on corruption charges. Rodriguez served from 1998-2002 and was briefly Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2004.
(SFC, 4/28/11, p.A2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_%C3%81ngel_Rodr%C3%ADguez)
2011 Apr 27, In Egypt masked gunmen blew up a natural gas terminal near the border with Israel, sending flames shooting into the air in the early hours of the morning and forcing the shutdown of the country's gas export pipeline to Israel and Jordan. Suspicion immediately fell on Sinai Bedouins angered by what they see as the neglect of their areas by the central government or Muslim militants opposed to the export of natural gas to Israel.
2011 Apr 27, In southern Iraq a US soldier died in a non-combat related incident.
2011 Apr 27, Ivory Coast renegade warlord Ibrahim "IB" Coulibaly (47), a two-time coup plotter who began the pro-democracy battle for Abidjan, was killed in fighting with one-time allies turned enemy. A commander for Defense Minister Guillaume Soro said Coulibaly appeared to have killed himself rather than surrender.
2011 Apr 27, Ratings agency Standard & Poor's cut its outlook on Japan's sovereign debt following last month's quake-tsunami disaster and warned that reconstruction costs could pass $600 billion.
2011 Apr 27, Kenya's government said it is removing the tax on maize and wheat imports in a bid to cushion citizens from the effects of rising global food prices. PM Raila Odinga told parliament that the government also wants to remove all taxes on kerosene, the main fuel used for cooking.
2011 Apr 27, Libya's tribes urged Moamer Kadhafi to cede power, as rebels backed by NATO air strikes said they forced the strongman's missiles out of range of the lifeline port of Misrata. Gaddafi forces fired Russian-made Grad missiles into the rebel-held town of Zintan. A NATO airstrike in Misrata reportedly killed 12 rebels.
(AFP, 4/27/11)(Reuters, 4/27/11)(AP, 4/28/11)
2011 Apr 27, Mexico's Senate approved constitutional changes that would let lawmakers run for re-election and permit independents to seek office. Security forces exhumed eight more bodies from mass graves in Durango where drug gangs are believed to have buried their victims, bringing the total from a monthlong search to 104.
2011 Apr 27, In North Korea former US president Jimmy Carter met with Kim Yong-Nam, North Korea's de facto head of state, during a peace mission to Pyongyang and said in a blog posting that the North seeks better ties with Washington. Travelling with Carter on this trip were former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, ex-Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and former Irish president Mary Robinson.
2011 Apr 27, Rival Palestinian groups said they reached an agreement on reuniting their governments in the West Bank and Gaza after years of bitter infighting that weakened them politically and caused the deaths of hundreds in violent clashes and crackdowns since. Israel swiftly rejected the prospect.
2011 Apr 27, Syrian troops tightened control over flashpoints of protest against President Bashar al-Assad, who faced growing international calls to end violence that a rights group said had killed over 450 people. The Syrian army sent more tanks and reinforcements into Daraa as part of a widening crackdown.
2011 Apr 27, In Taiwan a popular tourist train overturned in the southern mountains, killing at least six Chinese visitors.
2011 Apr 27, Tibetan exiles elected Lobsang Sangay (43), international law expert and Harvard academic, as their new prime minister. He will face the daunting task of assuming the political duties of a global icon, the Dalai Lama.
2011 Apr 27, Thailand pulled out of talks with Cambodia and deadly border clashes continued for a sixth day.
2011 Apr 27, Turkey's PM Erdogan announced what he called a "crazy and magnificent" plan to build a new waterway to the Black Sea, to be completed by 2023, promising that the tanker-clogged Bosporus through Istanbul would soon be used for sports and boat trips.
2011 Apr 27, Yemeni residents in scores of cities and towns across the nation launched a civil disobedience campaign to bring down the country's long-serving president. 12 protesters were killed in Sanaa.
2012 Apr 27, In Albany, Indiana, the remains of Stephanie Marie Kirk (35), last seen on March 25, were found at the home of William Gibson. He was being held in connection with the death last week of Christine Whitis (75) and the death of Karen Hodella (44), whose body was found in 2003.
2012 Apr 27, It was reported that the Taliban have succeeded in closing or partly closing some 50 schools in southern Afghanistan in response to a government decision last fall to ban motorcycles in the southern districts of Ghazni province. A British soldier was shot dead in the southern province of Helmand. NATO said 3 US service members were killed in a bomb attack in the east.
(SFC, 4/27/12, p.A2)(AFP, 4/28/12)(SFC, 4/28/12, p.A3)
2012 Apr 27, In Australia Clarence Marae, the private secretary of Vanuatu's PM Kilman, was arrested at Sydney airport while traveling with PM Kilman, en route to Israel for a state visit. The arrest was linked to an alleged international tax scam.
2012 Apr 27, In China the nephew of activist Chen Guangcheng defended himself from intruders who broke into the family home in eastern Shandong province apparently searching for his uncle following his April 22 dramatic escape from house arrest. The nephew later faced a charge of "intentional murder," despite the fact no one died in the encounter.
2012 Apr 27, Denmark's intelligence service said 3 men have been arrested in Copenhagen on suspicion of plotting a terror attack after police found them with automatic weapons and ammunition.
2012 Apr 27, Guinea-Bissau's coup leaders released the country's ousted prime minister and interim president after more than two weeks of captivity, allowing the former leaders to travel to Ivory Coast.
2012 Apr 27, In central Iraq a Sunni mother and her three children were shot dead in an apparent sectarian attack in the village of Abu Garma, Diyala province.
2012 Apr 27, Malaysian authorities took action to prevent a mass political rally calling for electoral reform from going ahead this weekend, sealing off a square in the capital and serving a court order banning the protest.
2012 Apr 27, The Mexican government said it will tighten inspections and lower maximum allowed weights for freight trucks after protests over a string of deadly accidents involving double-trailer trucks.
2012 Apr 27, A Dutch judge upheld the government's plan to introduce a "weed pass" to prevent foreigners from buying marijuana in coffee shops in the Netherlands.
2012 Apr 27, In northern Nigeria gunmen suspected of belonging to the Boko Haram Islamist sect fatally shot a police inspector outside his home Yobe state. A car in which Edo state Gov. Oshiomhole normally rides was struck by an oncoming vehicle. 3 journalists were killed in the suspicious accident.
(AFP, 4/27/12)(AFP, 6/28/12)
2012 Apr 27, In Oman say eight members of a family burned to death after their car struck a truck parked on the roadside.
2012 Apr 27, In Pakistan about eight people were killed in the day long fighting between LEAs and criminal elements in the Lyari area of Karachi.
(http://dawn.com/2012/04/28/brother-of-lyari-gang-leader-killed-in-police-action/)
2012 Apr 27, Romania's government fell in a no-confidence vote, as opposition parties seized on widespread public anger over biting austerity measures, cronyism and corruption. Some 235 lawmakers voted against the government of PM Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, four more votes than needed.
2012 Apr 27, South African police snipers shot dead a 30-year-old man who had taken two women hostage inside a Durban hospital. Police believed the man was a teacher who suffered from bipolar disorder, and was receiving treatment at the hospital.
2012 Apr 27, Tens of thousands of South Koreans flocked to the opening show of Lady Gaga's global tour, amid colorful scenes as female and male fans donned outrageous outfits in honor of the US pop diva.
2012 Apr 27, Spain's government reported that unemployment rose to 24.4% in the first quarter.
2012 Apr 27, In Sudan a mother and her two children were killed when a Sudanese plane bombed a village around Umm Durain, South Kordofan state. Government troops were reported killed when they tried to retake a position from rebels in the Talodi area.
2012 Apr 27, Syrian state media said a suicide car bombing in Damascus killed 11 people. Thousands of Syrians protested elsewhere to denounce persistent violence by President Bashar Assad's regime. Damascus was hit by four explosions. At least 7 more people were killed in protests elsewhere.
(AFP, 4/27/12)(AP, 4/28/12)(AFP, 4/30/12)
2012 Apr 27, In Ukraine four blasts within minutes rocked the center of Dnipropetrovsk in what prosecutors believed was a terrorist attack. Nine children were among the 31 injured. The crime was investigated as a terrorist attack and 4 men were soon arrested.
(AP, 4/27/12)(AFP, 4/28/12)(AP, 6/1/12)
2012 Apr 27, The UN food agency appealed to oil- and mineral-rich nations to set up a fund to combat the food crisis gripping the Sahel desert region (Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger) and other parts of Africa. The group said it needed $110 million (83 million euros) to combat the crisis in the short term.
2013 Apr 27, The US military said that 100 of 166 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have joined the hunger strike. 19 were receiving liquid nutrients through a nasal tube to prevent dangerous weight loss. Lawyers put the number of hunger strikers at 130.
(SSFC, 4/28/13, p.A5)(Econ, 5/4/13, p.27)
2013 Apr 27, The FBI arrested Everett Dutschke (41) at his Tupelo, Miss., home in connection with poisoned letters sent to the president and others.
2013 Apr 27, In California Leila Fowler (8) was stabbed to death near her home in Calaveras County. On May 11 police arrested her brother (12) as a suspect in the murder. The boy had blamed an intruder.
2013 Apr 27, In Kentucky Rosemarie Smead (70), former Carmelite nun, was ordained a priest as part of a dissident group operating outside of official Roman Catholic Church authority. The modern woman priest movement started in Austria in 2002, when seven women were ordained by the Danube River by an independent Catholic bishop.
2013 Apr 27, NASA telescopes recorded a massive, record-setting gamma ray burst, indicating the death of a star and the formation of a black hole, 3.7 billion light-years away.
2013 Apr 27, In Afghanistan a coalition MC-12 Liberty aircraft crashed in Zabul province killing four service members. The Taliban announced the start of their spring offensive, signaling plans to step up attacks as the weather warms, making both travel and fighting easier.
2013 Apr 27, Algeria's Pres. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika (76) suffered a stroke and was flown to France for treatment. It was initially described as a mini-stroke, but a June 11 statement said it was a full stroke.
2013 Apr 27, British anti-war protesters demonstrated outside a Royal Air Force base used to control drone flights over Afghanistan. Until this week, British drones were operated only from a US Air Force base in Nevada.
2013 Apr 27, Ethiopian Airlines flew a Boeing 787 from Ethiopia to Nairobi, Kenya, the first commercial flight of the Dreamliner since it was grounded for smoldering batteries.
2013 Apr 27, Icelanders voted in a parliamentary election. The center-right parties that led the country into economic collapse five years ago returned to power. The conservative Independence Party won the most votes but it and the rural-based Progressive Party each won 19 seats in the 63-seat parliament. The Pirate Party, just a few months old, took 5.1% of the vote, gaining three seats in the Althingi.
(AP, 4/27/13)(SFC, 4/29/13, p.A2)(AP, 4/30/13)(Econ, 5/4/13, p.56)
2013 Apr 27, In Indonesia an Australia woman (28) was attacked and raped while vacationing with her family near Bali's popular Kuta beach. Her assailant also stole stole three iPads, two cellphones and $154 in cash.
2013 Apr 27, In Iraq gunmen killed five soldiers in Ramadi near the main Sunni protest camp west of Baghdad. Gunmen also opened fire on a checkpoint manned by government-allied Sunni fighters, killing five of them, near the city of Tikrit.
2013 Apr 27, Israel was hit by rockets fired from the Gaza Strip by Islamic militant group Hamas. They exploded in open areas with no injuries.
2013 Apr 27, Italy's center-left leader Enrico Letta (46) forged a new government in a coalition with former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservatives, an unusual alliance of bitter rivals that broke a two-month political stalemate from inconclusive elections.
2013 Apr 27, In Libya an explosion at the Barka police station in Benghazi destroyed the facade but left no causalities.
2013 Apr 27, Mexican authorities said they have detained 108 undocumented immigrants along routes that thousands of Central Americans use every year to cross Mexico and enter the US illegally.
2013 Apr 27, In northern Mexico 10 members of the musical group La Reyna de Monterrey were killed and five injured in a road accident.
2013 Apr 27, Syrian rebels attacked the Abu Zuhour air base in the country's northwest. Rebels entered the Kweiras military air base in Aleppo province and destroyed its operations room. In the south opposition forces launched a new offensive called "the Houran Volcano," assaulting a string of army checkpoints and positions.
2013 Apr 27, Venezuelan officials arrested retired Brig. Gen. Antonio Rivero. He had gained fame for denouncing Cuban involvement in the Venezuelan military in 2010 and became a prominent member of the opposition, participating in post-vote protests this month.
2013 Apr 27, In Yemen tens of thousands rallied across the south to mark the 19th anniversary of the start of the country's brief, but bloody civil war. The protesters demanded independence from the north. 5 soldiers and 2 al-Qaida militants were killed in fighting in the central town of Radda. Col. Ahmed Abdel-Razaq, the intelligence chief in Mukalla, was gunned down in a drive-by shooting.
2014 Apr 27, President Barack Obama said that comments reportedly made by Donald Sterling, the owner of the LA Clippers pro basketball team, are "incredibly offensive racist statements," before casting them as part of a continuing legacy of slavery and segregation that Americans must confront.
2014 Apr 27, President Barack Obama pressed the Malaysian government to improve its human rights record and appealed to Southeast Asia's teeming youth population to stand up for the rights of minorities and the rule of law.
2014 Apr 27, US and Philippine officials said the two countries have reached a 10-year agreement that would allow a larger US military presence in the Philippines as it grapples with increasingly tense territorial disputes with China.
2014 Apr 27, A broad tornado killed at least 15 when it sliced through Arkansas at the start of the US tornado season. Two more people were killed died in Iowa and Oklahoma.
(Reuters, 4/28/14)(Reuters, 4/29/14)
2014 Apr 27, In Montana exchange student Diren Dede of Hamburg was shot to death in Missoula. Marks Kaarma said he found an intruder in his garage and shot him twice. Kaarma was charged the next day with deliberate homicide. Kaarma had reportedly baited and shot Dede following previous burglaries by local teenagers. On Feb 12, 2015, Kaarma was sentenced to seventy years in prison.
(SFC, 4/29/14, p.A5)(SFC, 12/5/14, p.A10)(SFC, 2/12/15, p.A10)
2014 Apr 27, Afghan officials said recent torrential rains have caused flash floods in the north that killed more than 100 people. Scores more were missing as helicopters searched for stranded villagers.
(AFP, 4/25/14)(SFC, 4/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Apr 27, In Central African Republic heavily armed African and French peacekeepers escorted some of the last remaining Muslims out of Bangui, trucking more than 1,200 people who for months had been trapped in their neighborhood by violent Christian militants.
2014 Apr 27, Dominican Rep. police arrested Nicola Pignatelli (43), an alleged high-ranking member of the Italian mafia. He had fled Italy in 2011 to avoid a prison sentence.
2014 Apr 27, An Egyptian court sentenced 42 supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi to prison terms ranging from three to 15 years on violence-related charges.
2014 Apr 27, Iraqi army helicopters attacked a jihadist convoy inside eastern Syria as it tried to approach the border, killing 8 people.
2014 Apr 27, Polls opened for Macedonia's double election, a presidential election runoff and snap national elections. PM Nikola Gruevski's ruling center-right party won its fourth consecutive general election victory, but looked likely to fall just short of gaining an outright majority. The main opposition Social Democrats refused to recognize the result.
2014 Apr 27, In Pakistan a roadside bomb killed three soldiers in an area bordering South and North Waziristan near the Afghan border.
2014 Apr 27, The Palestine Liberation Organisation's central council adopted a plan to pursue attempts to join 60 United Nations bodies and international agreements.
2014 Apr 27, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the Holocaust "the most heinous crime" of modern history and expressed his sympathy for the victims, a rare acknowledgment by an Arab leader of Jewish suffering during the Nazi genocide.
2014 Apr 27, In the northern Philippines a light plane crashed while on a cloud-seeding flight over farmlands that have been scorched by the intense summer heat, killing all four people on board.
2014 Apr 27, South Korea's PM Chung Hong-won resigned over the government's handling of a ferry sinking that has left more than 300 people dead or missing and led to widespread shame, fury and finger-pointing. Officials have taken into custody all 15 people involved in navigating the ferry Sewol, which sank April 16.
2014 Apr 27, In Taiwan nearly 30,000 rallied in opposition to the proposed 4th Longmen nuclear power plant near Taipei. PM Jiang Yi-huah backed down and agreed mothball two plants, stop construction at a third and hold a referendum prior to any operations.
2014 Apr 27, In Ukraine pro-Russian separatists seized control of the offices of regional state television in the eastern city of Donetsk.
2014 Apr 27, Pope Francis declared Popes John XXIII and John Paul II saints before some 800,000 people in an unprecedented ceremony made even more historic by the presence of emeritus Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter's Square.
2014 Apr 27, Thousands of Yemenis rallied in the port city of Mukalla to demand statehood for the formerly independent south 20 years after the crushing of a secession bid.
2015 Apr 27, The United States and Japan unveiled new guidelines for defense cooperation, reflecting Japan's willingness to take on a more robust international role amid growing Chinese power and rising concerns about nuclear-armed North Korea. This was the first revision to the guidelines since 1997.
2015 Apr 27, In southern California truck drivers walked off the job in a dispute over their wages and employee status, months after another West Coast labor conflict cost major delays in billions of dollars of trade.
2015 Apr 27, In Baltimore rioters plunged parts of the city into chaos torching a pharmacy and setting cars on fire, following the funeral of Freddie Gray, who died on April 19 after suffering a fatal spinal injury while in police custody. The governor declared a state of emergency and called in the National Guard to restore order.
2015 Apr 27, Bahrain's public prosecutor said that eight men were sentenced to fifteen years in prison for the attempted murder of nine policemen in 2013.
2015 Apr 27, In Bosnia's Serb Republic Muslim Bosniak Nerdin Ibric (24) was killed in an exchange of fire as he stormed into a police station in Zvornik. A Bosnian who fought in Syria was arrested the next day in connection with the assault.
2015 Apr 27, In Bulgaria Emilian Gebrev, a local arms manufacturer who had been selling ammunition to Ukraine, first realized something was wrong when his right eye suddenly turned "as red as the red on the Russian flag." A Russian poisoning left Gebrev hospitalized for a month. His son was poisoned, and so was another top executive at his company. The Investigative group Bellingcat later reported an alleged Russian military intelligence agent (45) had arrived in Bulgaria a few days before Gebrev was poisoned. The arms industry executive survived, but authorities didn't know who poisoned him. Sergei Fedotov, a suspect in the attempted killing of ex-spy Sergei Skripal in 2018, visited Bulgaria three times this year and was there when Gebrev was poisoned.
(AP, 2/10/19)(AP, 2/11/19)(NY Times, 12/23/19)
2015 Apr 27, Burundi authorities arrested a leading dissident and shut down the main independent radio station as they battled a second day of demonstrations against a bid by the president to cling to power for a third term. The Red Cross said at least 6 people have been killed in the street clashes.
2015 Apr 27, French investigators provided details to AFP of their year-long probe into the finances of Rifaat al-Assad, the younger brother of Syria's late dictator Hafez al-Assad. He was under investigation for amassing a 90-million-euro fortune, including a stud farm and luxury apartments, despite being kicked out of Syria "with nothing" 30 years ago.
2015 Apr 27, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras reshuffled his team handling talks with European and IMF lenders. Embattled Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis faced calls to quit after returning from a meeting of euro zone finance ministers in Riga isolated and empty-handed.
2015 Apr 27, In Libya 5 crew members from a private TV network were found dead near Bayda, after they were abducted last August in eastern Libya.
2015 Apr 27, In Nepal the death toll from the April 25 magnitude 7.9 earthquake climbed to more than 4,000. Reports trickling in from remote areas suggested it would rise significantly Another 66 were reported killed across the border in India and at least another 20 in Tibet.
2015 Apr 27, The Netherlands turned out in orange as King Willem-Alexander turned 48 and the whole country celebrated King's Day.
2015 Apr 27, In northeastern Nigeria suspected Boko Haram gunmen were reported to have shot dead 21 people in who were trying to return home to recover abandoned food supplies at Bultaram village, Yobe state.
2015 Apr 27, Polish border guards blocked 10 nationalistic Russian bikers loyal to President Vladimir Putin from entering Poland as part of a ride to commemorate the Red Army's victory over Nazi Germany 70 years ago.
2015 Apr 27, Former Romanian president Ion Iliescu (2000-2004) acknowledged approving the CIA's request for a site in Romania in 2002-2003, but said he would have refused had he known how it would be used.
2015 Apr 27, South Korea's Pres. Park Geun-hye accepted the resignation of PM Lee Wan Koo over a bribery scandal. He has been at the heart of a corruption scandal involving a dead businessman and other high-profile figures.
2015 Apr 27, In Syria Islamic insurgents overran a military base at the former Qarmeed factory in northwestern Idlib province, carting off tanks and other weapons in the latest blow to President Bashar Assad's forces in the region.
2015 Apr 27, In Yemen Saudi-led aircraft pounded Iran-allied Houthi militiamen and rebel army units in central Yemen and Sanaa despite a formal end to the air strikes.
2015 Apr 27, Yemen's exiled government declared three areas in the country engulfed in fighting between Shiite rebels, their allies and pro-government forces as "disaster" zones, including the southern port city of Aden, and said that the month of violence has claimed 1,000 civilian lives.
2016 Apr 27, The US-led military coalition targeted Islamic State in Iraq and Syria with 22 strikes.
2016 Apr 27, In Chicago Dennis Hastert (74), former US House speaker, was sentenced to 15 months in prison in a hush-money case that revealed accusations he sexually abused teenagers while coaching high school wrestling.
2016 Apr 27, The US state of Georgia executed Daniel Anthony Lucas (37) for the April 23, 1998, killings of a trucking company owner and his two children during a home burglary near Macon.
2016 Apr 27, In NYC police and federal agents arrested dozens of suspects in a wide-ranging investigation of rival street gangs that terrorized a Bronx neighborhood.
2016 Apr 27, It was reported that Islamic State supporters have published the names and addresses of 3,600 New Yorkers in an apparent "hit list" seemingly meant to escalate the group's campaign of sowing fear far from the battlefield in Syria. The names were released last week by a group calling itself United Cyber Caliphate on the encrypted chat application Telegram, which IS supporters are known to use to recruit supporters and spread propaganda.
(CSM, 4/27/16)
2016 Apr 27, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill into law that allows mental health counselors to refuse to treat patients based on the therapist's religious or personal beliefs.
2016 Apr 27, China's top anti-graft authority said it has found irregularities at the country's second-largest lender, China Construction Bank Corp.
2016 Apr 27, In Egypt a roadside bomb in the North Sinai town of El-Arish targeted an armored personnel carrier and killed 3 policemen with 8 others wounded.
2016 Apr 27, The EU's police mission in Kosovo conducted a major operation against an Albanian-Serb organized crime ring. Six people were arrested and authorities were hunting for a governing party lawmaker suspected of being the ringleader.
2016 Apr 27, The French billionaire and art collector Francois Pinault announced the creation of a new contemporary art museum in central Paris.
2016 Apr 27, Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted fugitive until his capture in Belgium last month, was returned to France to face justice. His lawyer said Abdeslam is willing to cooperate.
2016 Apr 27, In Guatemala at least 4 people died in a landslide at a trash dump in Guatemala City. Two days later 24 people were listed as missing.
(http://tinyurl.com/hnqpobv)(SFC, 4/230/16, p.A2)
2016 Apr 27, Israeli police shot dead Palestinian woman Maram Abu Ismail (24) and her brother, Ibrahim Taha (16), saying they were armed with knives and tried to carry out an attack at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank. Alaa Soboh, a Palestinian bus driver said he witnessed the incident, and that the pair appeared to be unfamiliar with crossing procedures and were swiftly challenged at the checkpoint.
(Reuters, 4/27/16)(SFC, 4/28/16, p.A2)
2016 Apr 27, Jordan banned a performance by popular Lebanese rock band Mashrou' Leila ("Leila's Project") on religious grounds, spurring criticism of the Western-allied kingdom, which portrays itself as an island of tolerance in a turbulent region.
2016 Apr 27, In Kazakhstan hundreds of people staged street protests in the western city of Aktobe over land reform, a rare act of defiance that could pose a challenge to the leadership of President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Critics had staged their first protest in the city of Atyrau on April 24.
2016 Apr 27, Two of the US Air Force's most advanced jets landed in Lithuania for the first time in a show of force and support for a region worried by Russian military maneuvers. The two F-22 fighters had landed in Romania earlier this week and F-22s last year visited Poland and Estonia, all counties concerned about Russian military ambitions.
2016 Apr 27, A member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said thousands of Nepali women are being trafficked every year as sex workers and bonded laborers, and China and South Korea are emerging as new destinations.
2016 Apr 27, In Spain construction workers came across 19 amphoras containing thousands of bronze and silver-coated coins dating from the end of the fourth century in the southern town of Tomares outside Seville. The coins are believed to have been recently minted at the time and had probably been stored away to pay soldiers or civil servants.
2016 Apr 27, In Sudan clashes between government troops and rebels began and continued until late April 29, with fighting initially erupting west of the town of Um Serdiba, South Kordofan state, leaving six insurgents dead and several wounded.
2016 Apr 27, Thailand's military government turned up the pressure on its opponents, filing a legal complaint against critics of a proposed new constitution and detaining 10 people in connection with social media postings.
2016 Apr 27, In Turkey a woman suicide bomber blew herself up in Bursa, killing herself and wounding at least 10 people.
2016 Apr 27, In eastern Ukraine at least five people including a pregnant woman were killed and more than 10 injured on the front line in the worst civilian loss of life there in months. The victims were spending the night in their cars at the checkpoint outside the village of Olenivka hoping to cross the line in the morning.
2016 Apr 27, Venezuelan cities cleaned up from a night of looting and fiery protests as government offices closed their doors for the rest of the week in the face of a worsening energy crisis that is causing daily blackouts.
2016 Apr 27, A Zanzibar health official said a cholera outbreak on the island archipelago has killed at least 45 people since March and that 3,000 people have been hospitalized with the disease.
2017 Apr 27, President Donald Trump said the leaders of Canada and Mexico called him asking the United States to remain a partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement and that he agreed.
2017 Apr 27, The United States blacklisted Mubarak Mohammed A Alotaibi (31), a Saudi man, who it said was the Syria-based deputy leader of Islamic State's affiliate in Saudi Arabia.
2017 Apr 27, Arkansas executed its 4th inmate in eight days. Kenneth Williams (38) was executed for killing Cecil Breen, former deputy warden, after escaping from prison in 1999. During the execution Williams briefly experienced coughing, convulsing, lurching and jerking as the state began to administer midazolam, the first of its three lethal injection drugs. Williams was less than three weeks into a life term for the 1998 killing of college cheerleader Dominique Hurd, when he escaped in a barrel of hog slop.
2017 Apr 27, Texas lawmakers approved SB4, a bill that penalizes local officials who fail to cooperate with federal immigration authorities by allowing police to inquire into the legal status of people who are merely detained rather than arrested.
2017 Apr 27, United Airlines said it will raise the payment limit to customers who give up seats on oversold flights to $10,000. Lawyers said United has reached a settlement with passenger David Dao (69), who was injured when he was yanked from a United flight on April 9.
2017 Apr 27, NASA said its unmanned Cassini spacecraft has survived its plunge between the rings of Saturn and, after briefly going dark for the flyby, is communicating again with Earth.
2017 Apr 27, In Afghanistan a military raid killed Abdul Haseeb Logari, the IS chief in Nangarhar. Two US Army Rangers died in the raid. The Pentagon later said they may have been killed as the result of friendly fire in the opening minutes of the three-hour battle.
2017 Apr 27, Britain's Criminal Finances Act of 2017 received Royal Assent, a significant step towards exposing dirty money in the London property market. The law allowed the seizure of homes from foreigners who cannot explain how they paid for them. Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs) were introduced by sections 1–2 of the Criminal Finances Act 2017.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexplained_wealth_order)(AFP, 4/29/17)
2017 Apr 27, London police arrested a 27-year-old man near parliament on suspicion of terrorism offences and possession of knives. Hours later, armed police raided a property in north London as part of an unrelated counter-terrorism investigation, firing CS gas as they entered and shooting a woman in her 20s. Six people were arrested.
2017 Apr 27, Haroon Syed, a British teenager arrested last September 8 and accused of planning a bombing in London, pleaded guilty to preparing terrorist acts.
2017 Apr 27, China's top anti-graft watchdog released new information on 22 fugitives who are hiding out abroad down to the street names where they may live, as China ramps up pressure on corruption suspects who have fled overseas.
2017 Apr 27, China passed a revised mapping law to bolster understanding of its territorial claims and to create hefty new penalties to "intimidate" foreigners who carry out surveying work without permission.
2017 Apr 27, Uighur activists reported that authorities in China's Xinjiang region are prohibiting parents from giving children at least 29 Islamic names, including Muhammad, Jihad and Islam.
2017 Apr 27, Google activated a line of caching servers in Cuba, becoming the first foreign company with the ability to provide online content in the country.
2017 Apr 27, In Cyprus a Cypriot-Norwegian child was kidnapped from outside a nursery school in the capital Nicosia. The next day four men were remanded in custody over the kidnapping. The Norwegian father emailed the mother to say the girl was with him somewhere in Cyprus.
2017 Apr 27, Egypt's Pres. El-Sissi ratified much-contested legal amendments that effectively give him power over the country's courts, as he will be the one appointing heads of judicial bodies.
2017 Apr 27, The European Commission stepped up its legal action against Poland over the logging of the protected primeval Bialowieza forest in the north east of the country, warning that the next step would be a lawsuit in the EU's top court.
2017 Apr 27, French riot police clashed with youths in central Paris when a demonstration against far right leader presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and her centrist rival Emmanuel Macron turned violent.
2017 Apr 27, Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was awarded 1 million euros ($1.1 million) in damages after the Cologne state court found his one-time ghostwriter had violated his privacy rights.
2017 Apr 27, Hong Kong authorities expanded their crackdown on the Chinese-controlled territory's opposition with a fresh round of arrests of pro-democracy activists. Police detained up to nine activists for their apparent involvement in an anti-China protest last year.
2017 Apr 27, In Indonesia female Islamic clerics declared a series of fatwas, including one to tackle child marriage, a rare example of women taking a leading religious role in the Muslim-majority country.
2017 Apr 27, Iraqi forces retook the town of Hatra, southwest of Mosul, on the third day of an operation that saw them wrest back a nearby UNESCO-listed ancient city.
2017 Apr 27, In Kashmir a 70-year-old civilian was killed and seven people were injured during an anti-India protest that erupted following a gunbattle that killed three Indian soldiers and two suspected rebels. Authorities have banned 22 social media sites in an effort to calm tensions in the disputed region after videos depicting the alleged abuse of Kashmiris by Indian forces fueled protests. But the sites remained online as the local telecom company struggled to block them.
2017 Apr 27, In Macedonia more than 100 people were injured this evening including protestors, policemen and lawmakers, after protesters broke through a police cordon and entered the parliament to protest against the election of an ethnic Albanian Talat Xhaferi as new speaker. In May, nine people received suspended prison sentences for their part in the violence. On Oct. 12 Pance Angelov (65) was convicted by a court of assaulting MP Radmila Secerinska and violently pulling her hair during the attack.
(AP, 4/28/17)(AFP, 10/12/17)
2017 Apr 27, Moldovan anti-corruption prosecutors detained the transport minister and a senior road management official on suspicion of embezzling European Union funds.
2017 Apr 27, Montenegro's PM Dusko Markovic said Russia has banned the import of its best-known wine because of the Balkan country's decision to become a member of NATO. Markovic said Russian authorities reported finding pesticides and plastic in wine and other products made by the Plantaze company.
2017 Apr 27, In Pakistan the Islamic State killed Maulvi Daud, a senior Afghan Taliban official, in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
2017 Apr 27, Pres. Mahmoud Abbas's Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) told Israel it would no longer pay for the electricity Israel supplies to Gaza, a move that could lead to a complete power shutdown in the territory, whose 2 million people already endure blackouts for much of the day.
2017 Apr 27, Palestinians across the West Bank observed a general strike in support of hundreds of hunger-striking prisoners held by Israel.
2017 Apr 27, Officials said Poland has signed its first deal to purchase liquefied natural gas from a US supplier, a step that will help the country's efforts to cut its dependence on deliveries from Russia.
2017 Apr 27, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Japanese PM Shinzo Abe to discuss a dispute over four islands that has kept the two countries from signing a peace treaty ending World War II.
2017 Apr 27, The Kremlin said that an opposition protest planned for April 29 was illegal and police would deal with anyone who showed up accordingly. Russian police raided the Moscow office of Open Russia, an organization founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a top foe of President Vladimir Putin. Open Russia, which helps opposition candidates and political prisoners, called for the protest.
2017 Apr 27, In Russia unknown attackers doused opposition leader Alexei Navalny with green antiseptic, burning one of his eyes.
2017 Apr 27, The Russian naval intelligence ship Liman sank off Turkey's Black Sea coast after colliding with the Togo-flagged Youzarsif H carrying livestock. All 78 personnel on board were evacuated.
2017 Apr 27, Two Saudi soldiers were killed in a rocket attack near the border with war-torn Yemen.
2017 Apr 27, An appeals court in Senegal upheld the life sentence of former Chad dictator Hissene Habre on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges, bringing to an end a landmark trial pursued by victims for more than 16 years.
2017 Apr 27, In Sri Lanka shops, offices and schools were closed and public transport was halted in the country's former civil war region in support of families who are demanding information from the government about loved ones listed as having disappeared during the conflict.
2017 Apr 27, Syrian activists said airstrikes across the opposition-held Idlib province have killed at least 19 people, with some targeting ambulances and medical centers. The activists believed Russia or the Syrian government launched the raids.
2017 Apr 27, Syria's state media reported that Israel has attacked a military installation near the Damascus International Airport.
2017 Apr 27, In Syria Mustafa Gunes, an Islamic State operative from Turkey, was killed in a US coalition air strike in Mayadin.
2017 Apr 27, In southern Thailand suspected Muslim insurgents killed four paramilitary army rangers in an ambush in Narathiwat province.
2017 Apr 27, The UN refugee agency chose Yusra Mardini as a goodwill ambassador. The Syrian teenage girl helped save a boat carrying fellow refugees and swam on the first Refugee Olympic team in Rio last year.
2018 Apr 27, US Pres. Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel aired differences over trade and NATO at a White House meeting where they tried to put on a show of warmth and friendship. Merkel faced an uphill struggle to save the Iran nuclear deal, avoid a trade war and make her relationship with the US president functional again.
(AFP, 4/27/18)(Reuters, 4/28/18)
2018 Apr 27, A declassified US congressional panel report released today on its investigation into Moscow's suspected interference in the 2016 US election said Russia has aggressively engaged in information warfare against the West for a decade.
2018 Apr 27, The Republican-led House intelligence committee released a lengthy report concluding it found no evidence that Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign, drawing praise from the president and rebuttals from Democrats.
2018 Apr 27, Volunteer US lawyers gave legal workshops just across the border in Mexico to Central American asylum seekers who traveled in a "caravan" that has been harshly criticized by President Donald Trump.
2018 Apr 27, In Arizona a wildfire began near the town of Clints Well. By April 30 it had swelled to more than 13 square miles.
2018 Apr 27, Philadelphia mob boss Joseph Merlino pleaded guilty to an illegal gambling charge as part of a deal allowing him to avoid a retrial in in a NYC racketeering case.
2018 Apr 27, In eastern Afghanistan a rocket fired by Taliban fighters late today hit a house in the Hoodi area of Goshta district, Nangarhar province. Five civilians were killed and three were injured.
2018 Apr 27, Armenia's acting head of government Karen Karapetyan rebuffed talks proposed by opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan, further escalating tensions after two weeks of protests.
2018 Apr 27, A two-day operation led by Belgian prosecutors seized servers and data from Islamic State propaganda outlets in a multi-country effort aimed at tracking down radicals and crimping the group's ability to spread its violent message. The operation involved authorities in the US, Canada, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Romania.
2018 Apr 27, Bosnian police detained former Bosnian army commander Atif Dudakovic (64) and 12 other people on suspicion of war crimes against Serb and Bosnian civilians and prisoners during the country's deadly 1992-95 war.
2018 Apr 27, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for stepped-up cooperation with India during an informal summit with PM Narendra Modi, amid tensions along their contested border and a rivalry for influence with their smaller neighbors that could determine dominance in Asia.
2018 Apr 27, China introduced a law making it potentially criminal to defame or deny the deeds and spirit of the country's historic martyrs, state media said, the latest move to protect symbols of state.
2018 Apr 27, In northwestern China an assailant killed seven middle school students who were on their way home from classes in Mizhi county, Shaanxi province. The suspected attacker was caught. The death toll soon rose to nine the stabbing attack carried out by a former pupil (28) seeking revenge for having been bullied.
2018 Apr 27, The European Union made a key breakthrough to completely ban pesticides that harm bees and their crop pollination. The ban on the three prevalent neonicotinoid pesticides will take effect at the end of the year.
2018 Apr 27, Football's world governing body FIFA said it had banned the head of the Brazilian football federation, Marco Polo Del Nero, for life following a graft probe.
2018 Apr 27, The German government said a Syrian presidential decree on real estate registration is a "cynical plan" designed to confiscate refugees' property. The decree, which ran in state-run media this month, gives property owners in certain parts of Syria one month to provide ownership deeds or face having their property confiscated.
2018 Apr 27, Former Guatemalan Pres. Alvaro Arzu (72) died in Guatemala City. He served as president from 1996 to 2000 and signed the 1996 peace accord ending the country's civil war. He later became mayor of the capital.
2018 Apr 27, A Kenyan movie due to become the first in the country's history to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival was banned by the Kenya Film Classification Board for seeking to "promote lesbianism." The story by Ugandan writer Monica Arac Nyeko won the 2007 Caine Prize, which is awarded to African writers of a short story published in English.
2018 Apr 27, Israeli soldiers fired bullets and tear gas at thousands of Palestinian protesters at the Gaza-Israel border, hours after the United Nations human rights chief criticized Israel for using "excessive force". Three Palestinians were killed and 200 were wounded by gunfire.
2018 Apr 27, In Mali 44 Fulanis were reported killed by Tuaregs along the Mali-Niger border. Extremists reportedly killed at least 47 Tuaregs over the last two days.
2018 Apr 27, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in set aside a year that saw them seemingly on the verge of war, grasped hands and strode together across the cracked concrete marking the Koreas' border. Kim became the first North Korean leader to visit South Korean territory. The leaders pledged in a joint statement to rid their peninsula of nuclear weapons.
2018 Apr 27, In Pakistan gunmen late today fatally shot three local tourists and their driver in the South Waziristan tribal region along the Afghanistan border.
2018 Apr 27, In Poland parents of disabled children held a 10th day of protests to voice frustration over what they consider inadequate state support, one of several political challenges confronting the country's conservative leadership.
2018 Apr 27, Romania's President Klaus Iohannis called on PM Viorica Dancila to resign, saying that she is unfit for the job, signaling a fresh round of political tensions between the centrist president and left-wing government.
2018 Apr 27, Russia's main intelligence agency said it has detained four men from a Siberian oil town who are linked to the Islamic State group and are suspected of plotting terror attacks in Moscow.
2018 Apr 27, In Singapore foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met to affirm a common vision amid happenings beyond their 10-member group.
2018 Apr 27, Four vessels carrying 20 crew members from Suriname and neighboring Guyana were attacked by assailants carrying guns and cutlasses. Five survivors were later rescued or found their way to shore. Three dead bodies have been recovered, but the fate of a dozen remained unclear.
2018 Apr 27, Sweden's legendary disco group ABBA announced that they have reunited to record two new songs, 35 years after their last single, sparking joy and surprise among fans.
2018 Apr 27, In Switzerland Erwin Sperisen, Guatemala's former police chief, was slapped with a 15-year prison sentence after being reconvicted for the deaths of seven inmates in Pavon jail (Guatemala) in September 2006. Sperisen held dual Swiss and Guatemalan citizenship and local rules allowed Swiss citizens to be tried at home for crimes committed abroad.
2018 Apr 27, Fighting between Syrian troops and Islamic State group fighters in southern neighborhoods of Damascus left dozens of people dead or wounded. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government bombardment killed 17 people, including seven children and two women in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk mostly controlled by IS.
2018 Apr 27, Thailand deported Sam Serey, the leader of a Cambodian anti-government group. He was at risk of being extradited to his homeland for imprisonment but said he is safely back in Denmark, where he has had political asylum for seven years.
2018 Apr 27, In Yemen an airstrike by a Saudi-led coalition in Sanaa killed two Shiite rebel leaders and dozens of their militiamen.
2019 Apr 27, US Navy Rear Admiral John Ring was removed as commander, Joint Task Force-Guantanamo "due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command." 40 "war on terror" detainees were still being held there after 17 years.
2019 Apr 27, Retired Lt. Col. Oliver North announced that he will not serve a second term as president of the National Rifle Association. This followed his failed attempt to force out NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre.
2019 Apr 27, In southern California a shooting attack at a synagogue in Poway, north of San Diego, left one person dead and three injured. Suspect John Earnest (19) had used an AR-type assault weapon and was soon arrested.
(AFP, 4/28/19)(SSFC, 4/28/19, p.A5)
2019 Apr 27, Tennessee authorities captured Michael Cummins (25), a suspect in the deaths of five people found slain at two homes in Sumner County. Police soon raise the death toll to seven.
(SSFC, 4/28/19, p.A5)(SFC, 4/29/19, p.A5)
2019 Apr 27, In Seattle, Wa., a construction crane collapsed from a building on Google's new campus killing four people.
2019 Apr 27, In Cameroon jihadists from Nigeria's Boko Haram killed at least four people and badly wounded four others in an attack on Kofia, an island on Lake Chad.
2019 Apr 27, China's President Xi Jinping at the end of a 2-day summit hailed deals worth more than $64 billion signed during China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) this week as he sought to reassure skeptics the project will deliver sustainable growth for all involved.
2019 Apr 27, In France "yellow vest" demonstrations took place for the 214th consecutive week to challenge the economic policies of Pres. Emmanuel Macron.
2019 Apr 27, Indonesia's navy intercepted a Vietnamese fishing vessel in waters off Indonesia's Natuna island chain. One of its patrol vessels was rammed by two Vietnamese coast guard ships after intercepting the fishing boat. Indonesia detained 12 Vietnamese fishermen from the boat, which sank in the clash.
2019 Apr 27, In Morocco 16 African migrants from various countries were killed in a vehicle crash between the coastal cities of Saidia and Nador. 17 others were injured.
2019 Apr 27, Mozambican officials urged those living near two rivers in the country's north to move to higher ground, as Cyclone Kenneth dumped heavy rains and caused some flooding. The death toll from Kenneth rose to five.
2019 Apr 27, Pakistani health officials suspended a nationwide anti-polio campaign after a health worker and two policemen escorting vaccination teams were killed in separate attacks across the country in less than a week. The decision to halt the campaign came after two new polio cases were reported in the country's northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
2019 Apr 27, In Pakistan a bomb blast near the Afghan border killed three security personnel in North Waziristan.
2019 Apr 27, Peru's government said former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is to spend three years under house arrest while corruption charges are prepared against him for allegedly taking bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
2019 Apr 27, Scandinavian airline SAS canceled hundreds of flights scheduled for April 28 as a pilot strike entered its second day, disrupting the travel plans of tens of thousands of passengers.
2019 Apr 27, Sri Lanka's government banned the militant National Thawheedh Jamaath (NTJ) under new emergency laws.
2019 Apr 27, Sadiq al-Mahdi, former Sudanese prime minister and top opposition leader called for Sudan to join the International Criminal Court which has indicted its ousted president Omar al-Bashir, as protesters and the military met to discuss civilian rule.
2019 Apr 27, In Syria attacks by two jihadist groups early today killed at least 22 government troops and militiamen in the northern province of Aleppo. Eight insurgents were also killed. The fighting subsided after Russian aircraft struck jihadist positions in the area. Russia aircraft also carried out strikes in neighboring Hama province, killing five civilians.
2019 Apr 27, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen reaffirmed her opposition to nuclear power before marching with anti-nuclear protesters, reviving an issue that has proven politically divisive in the past.
2019 Apr 27, In Tunisia seven women day laborer's being transported to work on a farm in the back of a pickup were among 12 people killed when it collided with a minivan.
2019 Apr 27, Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido used his latest mass rally to reiterate an appeal to the army to end its support for Nicolas Maduro's regime, and announced massive Mayday protests to oust the embattled president.
2019 Apr 27, In Vietnam state-run media said police this week broke up an online gambling ring that had handled more than $1 billion in bets and arrested 22 people, in what is believed to be the largest-ever internet betting operation in the communist country. So far a total of 22 people have been arrested including 12 organizers.
2020 Apr 27, US President Donald Trump slammed US cities and states seeking billions more dollars in federal aid to offset huge losses from the coronavirus outbreak as members of Congress spar over the next round of potential economic relief.
2020 Apr 27, The White House released new guidelines aimed at answering criticism that America's coronavirus testing has been too slow, and President Donald Trump tried to pivot toward a focus on "reopening" the nation.
2020 Apr 27, America cut funding for a group conducting broader research into how bat coronaviruses jump to humans, seemingly because of its collaboration with scientists in Wuhan, China.
(Econ., 5/2/20, p.10)
2020 Apr 27, The US Federal Reserve expanded eligibility for $500 billion in loans to 256 entities with sufficiently large populations that included states, counties and cities.
(Econ., 5/2/20, p.9)
2020 Apr 27, The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of health insurers seeking $12 billion from the federal government under a program set up by the Obamacare law aimed at encouraging them to offer medical coverage to previously uninsured Americans.
2020 Apr 27, The Save Our Country Coalition was formed as an alliance of think tanks and political committees to end state lockdowns implemented in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The alliance included CNP Action, an affiliate of the GOP-aligned Council for National Policy, which soon began recruiting pro-Trump doctors to go on television to prescribe reviving the US economy as quickly as possible.
(https://tinyurl.com/y9en5gwt)(SFC, 5/21/20, p.A6)
2020 Apr 27, California to date had 44,949 cases of coronavirus and 1,721 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 7,657 cases and 264 deaths. The US coronavirus cases rose to 965,942 with 54,883 deaths.
(sfist.com, 4/27/20)
2020 Apr 27, San Francisco Bay Area health officials said that orders to shelter in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus will be extended through the month of May.
2020 Apr 27, Democratic Governor Jared Polis of Colorado began a partial reopening of the coronavirus shutdown to help ease the burden on state unemployment benefit filings.
(Reuters, 5/4/20)
2020 Apr 27, Georgia's Gov. Brian Kemp allowed dine-in restaurant service and movie screenings to resume, despite warnings that, without sufficient testing, the state could see a surge in infections.
2020 Apr 27, Gov. John Bel Edwards announced he is extending Louisiana's stay-at-home order through May 15, saying some regions of the state have not shown enough progress to lessen widespread restrictions on businesses and public gatherings.
2020 Apr 27, Nevada joined a western regional pact to help fight the virus outbreak while moving closer to reopening businesses and modifying stay-at-home orders. Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak has not given a date for easing restrictions. He said the Western States Pact including Colorado, California, Oregon and Washington has a shared vision that puts science ahead of politics.
2020 Apr 27, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced he would lift some restrictions on outdoor recreation. Not just because the virus was starting to be contained, but also because people simply needed it.
2020 Apr 27, In Tennessee many restaurants were allowed dine-in service again as part of Republican Gov. Bill Lee's directive to begin reopening the economy.
2020 Apr 27, Wisconsin police found five people shot to death inside a Milwaukee home and arrested the man (43) who dialed 911 to report the slayings.
2020 Apr 27, Neurocrine Biosciences Inc said its add-on treatment for patients with Parkinson's disease received US approval, but the launch will be delayed until later this year because of disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. A month's supply of the drug, Ongentys, would have a list price below $670.
2020 Apr 27, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc and Sanofi SA said they would test their arthritis drug, Kevzara, in critically ill COVID-19 patients after the drug showed no benefit for patients with a less severe form of the disease.
2020 Apr 27, Oil prices slumped again on concerns over scarce storage capacity, especially in the United States, and global economic doldrums from the coronavirus pandemic.
2020 Apr 27, Australia's government said more than two million Australians have downloaded an app to trace contacts of COVID-19 patients hours after its release.
2020 Apr 27, It was reported that 30 workers at an offshore oil platform in Equatorial Guinea have tested positive for the coronavirus.
2020 Apr 27, In Germany a total of 157,770 people have been infected with the coronavirus, an increase of 1,257 in the 24 hours through this morning. Deaths rose by 99 to 5,976.
(Bloomberg, 4/27/20)
2020 Apr 27, India's federal medical research agency asked state government to stop using testing equipment from China because of conflicting results.
2020 Apr 27, Iran's death toll from the outbreak of new coronavirus rose by 96 in the past twenty four hours to 5,806. The total number of diagnosed cases reached 91,472.
2020 Apr 27, Iran's national coroner's authority said that alcohol poisoning killed 728 Iranians between Feb. 20 and April 7. Last year there were only 66 deaths from alcohol poisoning.
2020 Apr 27, Irish poet Eavan Boland (75) died following a stroke in Dublin. She was the director of Stanford's creative writing program. Her work included two volumes of prose: "Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time" (1995) and "A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet" (2011).
(SFC, 5/5/20, p.B3)(Econ., 5/16/20, p.82)
2020 Apr 27, Israeli warplanes flying over Lebanon fired missiles toward areas near Damascus early today, killing three civilians. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the missiles hit positions belonging to Iran and its regional proxies, killing four fighters and causing damage south of Damascus.
2020 Apr 27, Israeli cancer immunotherapy firm Compugen said it had positive initial results from an ongoing early-stage study of its COM701 therapy in patients with advanced solid tumors who have exhausted all standard treatments.
2020 Apr 27, Metropolitan Tokyo confirmed 39 more coronavirus cases, the fewest since March 30 and the second consecutive day of new cases below triple digits.
2020 Apr 27, In Lebanon Fawwaz Samman (27) was shot by soldiers in Tripoli during confrontations that began late today and died in a hospital hours later.
2020 Apr 27, Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar said he had "a popular mandate" to govern the country. Haftar declared the 2015 UN-mediated Skhirat Agreement, that created a post-Gaddafi government, a "thing of the past" and said he was placing eastern parts of the country under direct military rule.
(AFP, 4/27/20) (The Telegraph, 4/28/20)
2020 Apr 27, In Libya a Turkish drone reportedly hit a food truck convoy in the country's west, killing at least five civilians. Militia groups said they targeted trucks carrying equipment and ammunition for eastern forces trying to take the capital.
2020 Apr 27, The Netherlands' number of confirmed coronavirus cases has risen by 400 to 38,245 with 43 new deaths. The country's death toll stands at 4,518.
2020 Apr 27, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari said the coronavirus lockdowns, which had been due to end today, needed to continue until 4 May. He also ordered new nationwide measures against Covid-19, including a night-time curfew and mandatory face masks. Nigeria has reported 1,273 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 40 deaths. Buhari said a lockdown would be imposed in Kano for an additional two weeks, and that he was sending a government team to investigate a high number of unexplained deaths.
(BBC, 4/28/20)
2020 Apr 27, Norwegian children returned to school as hair salons and tattoo parlors reopened under easing coronavirus restrictions.
2020 Apr 27, In Peru nine inmates died following a prison riot over the demand for better sanitary measures and coronavirus medical care at the Miguel Castro Castro prison.
2020 Apr 27, Russia reported 87,147 confirmed coronavirus cases and nearly 800 deaths. News reports from a dozen regions in the past two weeks suggest at least 450 medical workers have had COVID-19, with 11 doctors and five nurses dying.
2020 Apr 27, The Saudi-led military coalition in war-torn Yemen rejected a declaration of self-rule by separatists in the country's south and demanded "an end to any escalatory actions".
2020 Apr 27, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), disclosed a 5.7% passive stake in Live Nation Entertainment Inc., an entertainment company that promotes events including ticketing, sponsorship and advertising services.
2020 Apr 27, In Senegal the coronavirus has infected over 736 people and killed 9. The capital's 40,000 street children have become more vulnerable since the government declared a state of emergency over the epidemic in late March.
2020 Apr 27, Switzerland eased coronavirus curbs. More than 1,350 people in Switzerland have died of COVID-19 as the number of people with positive tests neared 30,000.
2020 Apr 27, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threw his weight behind the country's top Muslim cleric, who caused a storm by claiming homosexuality "brings disease and causes this generation to decay".
2020 Apr 27, Turkish officials said 402 people have been detained in the past 42 days for allegedly sharing "false and provocative" social media postings concerning the coronavirus outbreak.
2020 Apr 27, Ugandan opposition presidential candidate Bobi Wine accused the police of torturing and blinding Francis Zaake, one of his allies, shortly before the lawmaker, detained over coronavirus social distancing rules, was brought to court on a stretcher.
2020 Apr 27, The UN human rights office voiced concern on Monday about more than a dozen countries that have declared states of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic where police have arrested or detained hundreds of thousands of people and killed others.
Go to April 28