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Today in History - March 4
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561 Mar 4, Pelagius I, Italian Catholic Pope (556-61), died.
(PTA, 1980, p.120)
1152 Mar 4, Frederick Barbarossa was chosen as emperor and united the two factions, which emerged in Germany after the death of Henry V.
1172 Mar 4, Stephan III, King of Hungary (1162-72), died.
1193 Mar 4, Saladin [Salah ed-Din]) Yusuf ibn Ayyub (52), Kurdish sultan of Egypt and Syria (1175-1193), died. Saladin led the Muslims against the Crusaders. He had reimposed Sunni orthodoxy in Egypt after routing the Fatimids, a dynasty of Ismaili Shias which had ruled for two centuries.
(SSFC, 9/29/02, p.M6) (PC, 1992, p.100)(AP, 3/4/04)(Econ, 5/4/13, p.52)
1386 Mar 4, Jogaila was crowned King of Poland.
1394 Mar 4, Prince Henry the Navigator, sponsor of Portuguese voyages of discovery, was born.
1461 Mar 4, Henry VI was deposed and the Duke of York was proclaimed King as Edward IV and continued as King of England until 3 October 1470.
1484 Mar 4, Casimir (Kazimierz), the son of Lithuania's Grand Duke Casimir, died in Grodno at age 25. In 1602 he was declared a saint and protector of Lithuania. St. Casimir was born Oct 3,1458, in Cracow.
1540 Mar 4, Protestant count Philip of Hessen married his 2nd wife.
1562 Mar 4,The Archdiocese of Riga was attached to Lithuania.
1570 Mar 4, Spain's King Philip II banned foreign Dutch students.
1590 Mar 4, Mauritius of Nassau's ship reached Breda, Netherlands.
1595 Mar 4, Robert Southwell, English poet, was hanged for becoming a Catholic priest.
1611 Mar 4, George Abbot was appointed archbishop of Canterbury.
1621 Mar 4, Jakarta, Java, was renamed Batavia.
1634 Mar 4, Samuel Cole opened the first tavern in Boston, Massachusetts.
1665 Mar 4, English King Charles II declared war on Netherlands.
1675 Mar 4, John Flamsteed was appointed 1st Astronomer Royal of England.
1678 Mar 4, Antonio Vivaldi (d.1741), Italian Baroque composer (4 Seasons) and violinist, was born in Venice. [see 1675]
1681 Mar 4, England's King Charles II granted a charter to William Penn (37) for 48,000 square miles that later became Pennsylvania. Penn's father had bequeathed him a claim of £15,000 against the king. Penn later laid out the city of Philadelphia as a gridiron about 2 miles long, east to west, and a mile wide.
(PCh, 1992, p.259)(AP, 3/4/98)(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.T1)
1699 Mar 4, Jews were expelled from Lubeck, Germany.
1741 Mar 4, English fleet under Admiral Ogle reached Cartagena, Colombia.
1747 Mar 4, Casimir Pulaski (d.1779), Count, American Revolutionary War General, was born in Poland. Pulaski led troops in some of the bloodiest fighting of the Revolutionary War.
1774 Mar 4, The 1st sighting of the Orion nebula was made by William Herschel.
1782 Mar 4, Johann Wyss, Swiss folklorist, writer (Swiss Family Robinson), was born.
1789 Mar 4, The Constitution of the United States, framed in 1787, went into effect as the first Federal Congress met in New York City. Lawmakers then adjourned for the lack of a quorum (9 senators, 13 representatives).
(WUD, 1994, p.314)(AP, 3/4/98)(HN, 3/4/98)(SC, 3/4/02)
1789 Mar 4, Pavel P. Gagarin, Russian monarch, was born.
1791 Mar 4, President Washington called the US Senate into its 1st special session.
1791 Mar 4, Vermont was admitted as the 14th state. It was the first addition to the original 13 colonies.
1791 Mar 4, 1st Jewish member of US Congress, Israel Jacobs (Pennsylvania), took office.
1792 Mar 4, Oranges were introduced to Hawaii.
1793 Mar 4, George Washington was inaugurated as President for the second time. His 2nd inauguration was the shortest with just 133 words. Since George Washington's second term, Inauguration Day had been March 4 of the year following the election. That custom meant that defeated presidents and congressmen served four months after the election. In 1933, the so-called Lame Duck Amendment to the U.S. Constitution moved the inauguration of newly elected presidents and congressmen closer to Election Day. The 20th Amendment required the terms of the president and vice-president to begin at noon on January 20, while congressional terms begin on January 3.
1793 Mar 4, French troops conquered Geertruidenberg, Netherlands.
1797 Mar 4, Vice-President John Adams, elected President on December 7, to replace George Washington, was sworn in. Adams soon selected Timothy Pickering as his secretary of state. Pickering extended aid to Haitian slaves in their ongoing revolt against French colonists. This policy was reversed under Jefferson.
(HN, 3/4/99)(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.M6)
1798 Mar 4, Catholic women were force to do penance for kindling a Sabbath fire for Jews.
1801 Mar 4, Thomas Jefferson was the first President to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C.
1805 Mar 4, Pres. Thomas Jefferson delivered his 2nd inaugural address.
1809 Mar 4, Madison became 1st President inaugurated in American-made clothes.
1813 Mar 4, The Russians fighting against Napoleon reached Berlin. The French garrison evacuated the city without a fight.
1825 Mar 4, John Quincy Adams was inaugurated as 6th President.
1826 Mar 4, The Granite Railway in Quincy, MA, became the 1st US RR to be chartered.
1829 Mar 4, An unruly crowd mobbed the White House during the inaugural reception for President Jackson, the 7th US President. The event was later depicted by artist Louis S. Glanzman in his painting "Andrew Jackson's Inauguration" (1970).
(AP, 3/4/98)(WSJ, 1/17/09, p.W5)
1830 Mar 4, V. Bellini's opera "I Capuleti e i Montecchi" premiered in Venice.
(WSJ, 11/10/98, p.A20)(SC, 3/4/02)
1831 Mar 4, Georg Michael Telemann (82), composer, died.
1832 Mar 4, Jean Francois Champollion (b.1790), French scholar, died. His work included the 2-volume book "Egypt Under the Pharaohs" (1814) and a translation of the hieroglyphics of the Rosetta Stone, completed in 1822.
(ON, 8/10, p.7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Champollion)
1835 Mar 4, HMS Beagle moved into Bay of Concepcion.
1837 Mar 4, Martin Van Buren was inaugurated as 8th President.
1837 Mar 4, When Pres. Jackson left office there followed a financial crash and a bitter depression and the government was again forced to borrow money. Pres. Jackson had returned surplus government funds to the state governments as bonuses.
(WSJ, 2/6/97, p.C18)(WSJ, 6/26/00, p.A1)
1837 Mar 4, The Illinois state legislature granted a city charter to Chicago.
1837 Mar 4, Weekly Advocate changed its name to the Colored American.
1841 Mar 4, Dion Boucicault's "London Assurance" premiered in London.
1841 Mar 4, Longest presidential inauguration speech (8,443 words) to date was made by William Henry Harrison.
1845 Mar 4, James K. Polk was inaugurated as 11th President.
1848 Mar 4, Sardinia-Piemonte got a new Constitution.
1849 Mar 4, The US had no President. Pres. James K. Polk officially stepped down as the 11th US president and President Zachary Taylor refused to be sworn-in on a Sunday. US Sen. Some say David Rice Atchison (1807-1886) of Missouri then technically held office as president until Zachary Taylor took his oath the next day. However Atchison's term as president pro tempore of the Senate had also expired, and his new term did not begin until March 5.
(AH, 2/03, p.18)
1852 Mar 4, Lady (Isabella Augusta) Gregory, Irish playwright, was born. She helped found the Abbey Theatre.
1852 Mar 4, Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer (b.1809), died (NS) [see Feb 21].
1853 Mar 4, Pope Pius IX recovered Catholic hierarchy in Netherlands.
1853 Mar 4, William Rufus de Vane King (D) was sworn in as 13th US Vice President.
1858 Mar 4, Sen. James Henry Hammond, D-S.C., declared, "Cotton is king" in a speech to the US Senate.
1858 Mar 4, Matthew Calbraith Perry (63), the American naval officer who'd opened trade relations between the US and Japan, died in New York.
1861 Mar 4, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated president.
1861 Mar 4, The US Government Printing Office, created by Congressional Joint Resolution 25 of June 23, 1860, began operations.
1861 Mar 4, The first official flag of the Confederacy, the "Stars and Bars" flag, was adopted, and was almost immediately criticized by peers because of matters of principle and functionality.
1863 Mar 4, Battle of Thompson's Station, Tennessee.
1865 Mar 4, President Lincoln was inaugurated for his 2nd term as President. It was held at the Patent Office, the site of a military hospital. Four companies of African-American troops and lodges of African-American Masons and African-American Odd-Fellows joined the procession to the Capitol.
(WSJ, 2/12/04, p.D12)(SSFC, 1/20/13, Par p.4)
1865 Mar 4, Confederate congress approved the final design of "official flag."
1869 Mar 4, Ulysses S. Grant was sworn in as the 18th president of the US.
(ON, 9/01, p.7)
1873 Mar 4, Pres. Ulysses S. Grant accepted the oath of office, administered by Chief Justice Salmon Chase, for his 2nd term. At the inauguration ceremony 150 canaries, whose chirping was to amuse guests, froze to death in their cages.
(SFC, 1/20/09, p.A7)(www.bartleby.com/124/pres34.html)
1873 Mar 4, New York Daily Graphic, 1st illustrated daily newspaper in US, was published.
1876 Mar 4, US Congress decided to impeach Secretary of War (under Ulysses S. Grant) William Worth Belknap (1829-1890) of malfeasance in office for accepting over $24,000 in bribes from a post trader seeking immunity from removal. It is not clear whether he was aware of the arrangement or whether his wife had made the bargain and accepted the payoffs. Nevertheless, he was impeached by a unanimous vote of the United States Senate, though at his formal trial the Senate fell short of the number of votes required to convict. By then he had resigned, which doubtless accounted for his acquittal. He died in Washington, D.C. on October 13,1890 and was buried in Section 1 of Arlington National Cemetery.
(SC, 3/4/02)(www.arlingtoncemetery.net/wwbelkna.htm)
1877 Mar 4, The Russian Imperial Ballet staged the first performance of Tchaikovsky's incomplete ballet "Zwanenmeer" (Swan Lake) in Moscow.
(WSJ, 5/18/99, p.A24)(HN, 3/4/01)(SC, 3/4/02)
1880 Mar 4, NY Daily Graphic published 1st half-tone engraving made by S.H. Horgan.
1881 Mar 4, Fiction's Sherlock Holmes and Watson began "A Study in Scarlet", their 1st case together.
1881 Mar 4, James A. Garfield was inaugurated as 20th President.
1881 Mar 4, California became the 1st state to pass plant quarantine legislation.
1881 Mar 4, South African President Kruger accepted a cease-fire with the British in the First Boer War (1880-1881 – aka Transvaal Revolt). [see Mar 23]
1883 Mar 4, John Gordon Cashmans began "Vicksburg Evening Post" in Mississippi.
1883 Mar 4, Alexander H. Stephens (71), Vice President Confederate States, died.
1885 Mar 4, Grover Cleveland was inaugurated as 1st Democratic President since Civil War.
1887 Mar 4, William Randolph Hearst (23) became "Proprietor" of the SF Examiner newspaper.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A9)
1888 Mar 4, Knute Rockne, Norwegian-US football player, coach for Notre Dame, was born.
1889 Mar 4, Benjamin Harrison was inaugurated as 23rd President.
1893 Mar 4, Grover Cleveland (D) was inaugurated as 24th US President (2nd term).
1893 Mar 4, Francis Dhanis' army attacked the Lualaba and occupied Nyangwe (Congo).
1894 Mar 4, There was a great fire in Shanghai; over 1,000 buildings were destroyed.
1895 Mar 4, Gustav Mahler's 2nd Symphony, premiered in Berlin.
1897 Mar 4, Lefty O'Doul (d.1969), baseball star, was born in SF in the old Butchertown neighborhood south of Market. He played for the SF Seals, and spent 11 years in the major leagues with the Phillies, Dodgers, Yankees and Giants before returning to manage the Seals and the Pacific Coast League. He was the National League batting champ in 1929 with the Phillies and again in 1932 with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
(SFC, 3/5/96, p.C1)(SFC, 7/18/97, p.A9)
1897 Mar 4, William McKinley was sworn in as the 25th president.
1901 Mar 4, Charles Goren, world expert on the game of bridge, was born.
1901 Mar 4, 1st advanced copy of an inaugural speech was published by the Jefferson-National Intelligencer.
1901 Mar 4, William McKinley was inaugurated president for the second time. Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated as vice president. The team ran on the issue of keeping the Philippines as a colony.
1901 Mar 4, Term of George H. White, last of post-Reconstruction congressmen, ended.
1902 Mar 4, The American Automobile Association was founded in Chicago.
1904 Mar 4, George Gamow, nuclear physicist, cosmologist, writer (1, 2, 3...'infinity'), was born.
1904 Mar 4, Ding Ling, Chinese writer and women's rights activist, was born.
1904 Mar 4, Russian troops began to retreat toward the Manchurian border as 100,000 Japanese advanced in Korea.
1905 Mar 4, The inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt.
1905 Mar 4, Gerhart Hauptmann's "Elga" premiered in Berlin.
1906 Mar 4, John McAllister Schofield, a Union general in the Civil War and onetime commanding general of the army, died in St. Augustine, Fla., at age 74.
1908 Mar 4, The New York board of education banned the act of whipping students in school.
1908 Mar 4, A fire at Lake View School in Collinwood, Ohio, claimed the lives of 172 children and three adults.
1909 Mar 4, Harry Helmsley (d.1997), billionaire New York landlord (Empire State Building), was born in NYC.
1909 Mar 4, President Taft was inaugurated as 27th President during a 10" snowstorm.
1909 Mar 4, US prohibited the interstate transportation of game birds.
1911 Mar 4, Victor Berger of Wisconsin became the 1st socialist congressman in US.
1912 Mar 4, The French council of war unanimously voted a mandatory three-year military service.
1913 Mar 4, Gabriel Fauré's opera "Penelope" premiered in Monte Carlo.
1913 Mar 4, Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as 28th President.
1913 Mar 4, Department of Commerce & Labor was split into separate departments.
1913 Mar 4, 1st US law regulating the shooting of migratory birds was passed.
1914 Mar 4, Doctor Fillatre of Paris, France successfully separated Siamese twins.
1915 Mar 4, Petrus de Jong, Dutch premier (KVP, 1967-71), was born.
1917 Mar 4, Republican Jeanette Rankin of Montana took her seat as the first woman elected to the House of Representatives.
1918 Mar 4, Terek Autonomous Republic was established in RSFSR (until 1921).
1919 Mar 4, Czech Legions shot and killed some 50 German demonstrators, including women and children, in Sudetenland.
1920 Mar 4, Last day of Julian civil calendar in Greece.
1921 Mar 4, Warren G. Harding was sworn in as America's 29th President. By the time Pres. Woodrow Wilson left office, the top tax rate was 77%.
(HN, 3/4/98)(WSJ, 9/25/02, p.D8)
1921 Mar 4, Hot Springs National Park was created in Arkansas.
1922 Mar 4, Bert Williams (b.1874), Antigua-born black actor, mime and singer, died after collapsing onstage in Detroit. In 2005 Caryl Phillips authored "Dancing in the Dark," a novel based on Bert Williams. His recordings included "Nobody."
(www.duboislc.org/ShadesOfBlack/BertWms.html)(SFC, 2/11/08, p.E1)
1923 Mar 4, Lenin's last article in Pravda (about Red bureaucracy) was published.
1924 Mar 4, "Happy Birthday To You" was published by Claydon Sunny.
1925 Mar 4, President Calvin Coolidge's inauguration was broadcast live on 21 radio stations coast-to-coast.
1925 Mar 4, Swain's Island (near American Samoa) was annexed by US.
1926 Mar 4, De Geer government in Netherlands took office.
1928 Mar 4, Alan Sillitoe, novelist (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner), was born.
1928 Mar 4, The Transcontinental Footrace began and 55 men ran from Los Angeles to New York in 81 days. Andrew Payne of Oklahoma won the "Bunyon Derby."
(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.M4)(PBS-TV, 11/24/02)
1929 Mar 4, Herbert Hoover, trained in California as an engineer, was inaugurated as the 31st US President. Engineers in SF asserted: "the engineer dominates the 20th century."
(SFC, 2/05/04, p.E8)
1929 Mar 4, Charles Curtis (R-Kansas) became 1st native American Vice President.
1930 Mar 4, Coolidge Dam in Arizona was dedicated.
1932 Mar 4, The Pecora Investigation began. It was an inquiry by the United States Senate Committee on Banking and Currency to investigate the causes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The name refers to the fourth and final chief counsel for the investigation, Ferdinand Pecora, chief lawyer on the Senate Banking Committee from 1933-1934. In 2010 Michael Perino authored "The Hellhound of Wall Street: How Ferdinand Pecora's Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance."
(Econ, 1/9/10, p.33)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecora_Commission)(Econ, 11/13/10, p.103)
1932 Mar 4, Miriam Makeba, singer (Grammy 1965), was born in Johannesburg, South Africa.
1933 Mar 4, Henderson, DeSylva and Brown's "Strike Me Pink" premiered in NYC.
1933 Mar 4, Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated to his first term as president in Washington, D.C. He pledged to lead the country out of the Great Depression: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." The start of President Roosevelt's first administration brought with it the first woman to serve in the Cabinet: Labor Secretary Frances Perkins. He chose Homer Cummings as his attorney general. Cummings served 5 years and 10 months. Herbert Hoover was denied the courtesy of Secret Service protection traditionally accorded an outgoing president.
(AP, 3/4/98)(HN, 3/4/98)(SFC, 1/11/99, p.A5)(HNQ, 1/16/01)(SC, 3/4/02)
1933 Mar 4, The US Federal Reserve refused to lend and shut its doors. NYC bankers had turned to the Federal Reserve for funds as failing inland state banks called in inter-bank deposits.
(Econ, 4/12/14, p.54)
1936 Mar 4, The 1st test flight of airship Hindenburg was made in Germany.
1939 Mar 4, Laurence Steinhardt was named as the U.S. ambassador to the USSR
1941 Mar 4, 18 Geuzen resistance fighters were sentenced to death in The Hague.
1941 Mar 4, Serbian Prince Paul visited Hitler.
1943 Mar 4, Transport Number 50 departed with French Jews to Majdanek and Sobibor.
1944 Mar 4, The U.S. declared the non-recognition of Argentina because of their collaboration with the Axis.
1944 Mar 4, Louis Buchalter, aka Lepke, was executed at Sing Sing along with Mendy Weiss. Lepke and fellow gangsters had dispatched Weiss in 1935 to kill Dutch Schultz, who had planned to kill NYC prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey.
(AH, 12/02, p.4)
1944 Mar 4, A squadron of American B-17 bombers hit Berlin for the first time during daylight hours. Col. H. Griffin Mumford (d.2007) led a group 4-engine Flying Fortresses over Berlin.
(SFC, 7/20/07, p.B12)(www.100thbg.com/mainmenus/history/historysummary_home.htm)
1944 Mar 4, Anti-German strikes took place in North Italy.
1947 Mar 4, France and Britain signed an alliance treaty.
1948 Mar 4, Antonin Artaud (51), French poet, actor (Napoleon), died.
1949 Mar 4, In the USSR foreign minister V.M. Molotov was replaced by A. Vishinsky and Minister of Defense Marshal N.A. Bulganin was replaced by Marshal A.M. Vassilievsky. Molotov and Bulganin continued as members of the politburo.
(EWH, 1968, p.1197)(TOH, 1982, p.1949)
1949 Mar 4, Security Council of UN recommended membership for Israel.
1951 Mar 4, The US Treasury and Federal Reserve announced an accord. The agreement restored independence to the Federal Reserve. In 2001 Martin Mayer authored "The Fed: The Inside Story of How the World's Most Powerful Financial Institution Drives the Markets."
(WS, 6/27/01, p.A14)(http://tinyurl.com/2exjk8f)
1952 Mar 4, Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis were married in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles.
1952 Mar 4, North Korea accused the U.N. of using germ warfare.
1954 Mar 4, JE Wilkins was appointed 1st Black US sub-cabinet member.
1954 Mar 4, In Bulgaria Communist ruler Todor Zhivkov began a 35-year dictatorship. During his rule he authorized a forced assimilation drive against the 1 million ethnic Turks. Over 100 were killed and some 310,000 forcibly expelled.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todor_Zhivkov)(SFC, 8/7/98, p.D3)
1955 Mar 4, 1st radio facsimile transmission (fax) was sent across the continent.
1959 Mar 4, US Pioneer IV missed the Moon and became a 2nd (US 1st) artificial planet.
1960 Mar 4, Lucille Ball filed for divorce from Desi Arnaz.
1960 Mar 4, In Cuba Alberto Korda took a photo of Che Guevara at a rally where Castro blamed the US for the cargo ship disaster of the previous day. The photo later became famous as a poster of Che and symbol for the Cuban revolution.
(USAT, 10/8/97, p.8A)
1961 Mar 4, Paul-Henri Spaak resigned as Secretary-General of NATO.
1962 Mar 4, AEC announced 1st atomic power plant in Antarctica in operation.
1963 Mar 4, William Carlos Williams (b.1883), American physician and poet, died in Rutherford, NJ. In 2011 Herbert Leibowitz authored "Something Urgent I Have to Say to You": The Life and Works of William Carlos Williams.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Carlos_Williams)(Econ, 12/31/11, p.68)
1963 Mar 4, Six people got the death sentence in Paris plotting to kill de Gaulle.
1964 Mar 4, Jimmy Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering.
1965 Mar 4, David Attenborough became the new controller of BBC2.
1966 Mar 4, John Lennon said: "We (Beatles) are more popular than Jesus." Radio stations in the Netherlands and in Spain quickly banned the playing of Beatle records as did the South African Broadcasting Corporation, stating that "The Beatles' arrogance has passed the ultimate limit of decency. It is clowning no longer."
1966 Mar 4, North Sea Gas was 1st pumped ashore by BP.
1966 Mar 4, Canadian Pacific airliner exploded on landing in Tokyo and 64 died.
1968 Mar 4, Martin Luther King Jr. announced plans for Poor People's Campaign. In late March and early April 1968, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. devoted his organizing talents to a drive to bring the nation's poor people to Washington, D.C. for a series of massive nonviolent demonstrations. King's "Poor People's Campaign" would attempt to unify African Americans, Latinos, and lower-income whites in pressing the Johnson Administration and Congress in an election year to enact a $30 billion-a-year domestic "Marshall Plan" to alleviate poverty.
(SC, 3/4/02)(http://hnn.us/articles/49016.html)
1968 Mar 4, NASA launched its Orbiting Geophysical Observatory 5.
1970 Mar 4, The French submarine Eurydice exploded and sank in the Mediterranean off Cape Camarat killing all 57 of its crew.
1971 Mar 4, Five Turkish militants (the Turkish Revolutionay Army) kidnapped 4 US military men in Ankara. The kidnappers released the four airmen unharmed on March 8, and were subsequently arrested, tried and convicted. Three were hanged, one was imprisoned, and one was killed in a gunfight with Turkish authorities.
(www.prophetofdoom.net/Islamic_Terrorism_Timeline_1971.Islam)(Econ, 8/13/16, p.21)
1971 Mar 4, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau (52) married Margaret Sinclair (22) in North Vancouver, B.C. They later divorced.
(AP, 3/4/99)(SFC, 9/29/00, p.D7)
1972 Mar 4, Libya and USSR signed a cooperation treaty.
1973 Mar 4, Khalid Duhham Al-Jawary (b.1947), and possibly others readied cars with bombs in anticipation of Israeli PM Golda Meir's visit to NYC. The bombs failed to detonate and were discovered after two cars on Fifth Avenue were towed. The FBI learned about a third car at JFK and notified police. In 1979 Border police stopped Al-Jawary's car as he and another man tried to cross into Germany from Austria. In the trunk of the car, police found 88 pounds of high explosives, electronic timing-delay devices and detonators hidden in a suitcase. They also unearthed cash and nine passports inside a portable radio that could be used to monitor transmissions from ships, airplanes or the police. Germany released Al-Jawary long before the FBI knew that he had been taken into custody. In 1991 he was detained in Rome and picked up by the FBI. In 1993 a jury convict Al-Jawary, just days after the first attack on the World Trade Center, based on evidence that included his fingerprints on one of the NYC bombs. In 2009 Al-Jawary was deported to Sudan after completing only about half his term, including time served prior to his sentencing and credit for good behavior.
(AP, 1/25/09)(SFC, 2/27/09, p.A5)(WSJ, 3/5/09, p.A6)
1974 Mar 4, The first issue of People Magazine was dated March 4.
1974 Mar 4, The play "Knuckle" by David Hare (b.1947) premiered in London.
(www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uthrc/00052/hrc-00052.html)(SC, 3/4/02)
1974 Mar 4, Harold Wilson, head of the Labor Party, replaced resigning Edward Heath as British premier. Wilson called elections for October and the Labor Party defeated the Conservatives, after which Margaret Thatcher replaced Heath as party leader (1975).
(SC, 3/4/02)(SFC, 7/18/05, p.B6)
1975 Mar 4, Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), British-born American film comedian, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.
1976 Mar 4, Pan Am was the first airline charged with criminal negligence in a crash.
1977 Mar 4, A 7.4 earthquake in Romania killed about 1,570 people and was felt across southern and eastern Europe.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Bucharest_Earthquake)(AP, 3/4/98)(SFC, 4/28/99, p.A15)
1978 Mar 4, Chicago Daily News, founded in 1875, published its last issue.
1979 Mar 4, "Grand Tour" closed at Palace Theater in NYC after 61 performances.
1979 Mar 4, The US Voyager I obtained the first image of Jupiter's rings.
1980 Mar 4, Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF won parliamentary election in Zimbabwe. Black nationalist guerrillas led by Robert Mugabe laid down their arms and beat their white-backed opponents at the polls. Rhodesia was renamed Zimbabwe. Martin Meredith later authored "The Past Is Another Country," the story of Rhodesia.
(WSJ, 9/8/98, p.A1)(SC, 3/4/02)(WSJ, 3/13/02, p.A16)
1981 Mar 4, A jury in Salt Lake City convicted Joseph Paul Franklin, an avowed racist, of violating the civil rights of two black men who were shot to death.
1982 Mar 4, NASA launched Intelsat V.
1985 Mar 4, The EPA ordered a virtual ban on leaded gas.
1985 Mar 4, New Zealand floated its currency.
1986 Mar 4, Aleta Carol Bunch (16) was kidnapped, raped and murdered in Augusta, Georgia, by Alexander E. Williams IV (17). Williams was convicted and sentenced to death. In 2000 the state Supreme Court stayed the execution to see if electrocution violated the state constitution. Williams, a chronic paranoid schizophrenic, was kept synthetically sane with forced medication. His execution, set for Feb 20, was stayed on Feb 19. Williams was granted clemency Feb 25 and his sentence was commuted to life in prison.
(SFC, 8/23/00, p.A7)(SFC, 2/19/02, p.A3)(SFC, 2/20/02, p.A7)(SFC, 2/26/02, p.A5)
1987 Mar 4, President Reagan addressed the nation on the Iran-Contra affair. He took full responsibility for the affair acknowledging his overtures to Iran had "deteriorated" into an arms-for-hostages deal. Michale Ledeen, Pentagon employee, later authored "Perilous Statecraft: An Insider's Account of the Iran-Contra Affair."
(AP, 3/4/98)(HN, 3/4/98)(SFC, 5/14/03, p.A19)
1987 Mar 4, Jonathon Pollard (b.1954), US naval intelligence analyst convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage, was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He had sought to share US intelligence on Iraqi weapons with Israel and did so when after his superiors disagreed.
(WSJ, 1/25/96, p.A-16)(WSJ, 1/28/98, p.A18)(www.jonathanpollard.org/2000/010900.htm)
1988 Mar 4, The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the civilian unemployment rate had dropped the previous month to 5.7 percent.
1989 Mar 4, Time Inc. and Warner Communications Inc. announced a deal valued at $14 million to merge into the world's largest media and entertainment conglomerate. The supreme court of Delaware had judged that Time's directors could reject a $200-per-share hostile offer from Paramount, forcing shareholders to accept a $138 friendly bid from Warner.
(AP, 3/4/99)(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.B1)(Econ, 3/11/06, p.69)
1989 Mar 4, Eastern Airlines machinists went on strike and were joined by pilots and flight attendants.
1990 Mar 4, The 20th Easter Seal Telethon was held.
1990 Mar 4, Atlantis 6, the US 65th manned space mission STS 36, returned from space.
1990 Mar 4, Voters in the Soviet republics of Russia, Byelorussia and the Ukraine participated in local and legislative elections, resulting in notable gains for reformists and nationalists.
1991 Mar 4, 2:05 p.m., The Army's 37th Engineer Battalion blew up 33 Iraqi bunkers in the Iraqi desert. The Pentagon later acknowledged that one of the bunkers probably contained shells of sarin, a nerve agent, and mustard gas.
(SFC, 8/12/96, p.A3)
1991 Mar 4, George W. Bush notified the SEC about his 1990 sale of Harken stock.
(SSFC, 7/28/02, p.A19)
1991 Mar 4, Iraq released ten allied prisoners-of-war. A second group was freed the following day.
1991 Mar 4, The Bank of Credit & Commerce International divested itself of 1st American Bank. BCCI was majority owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA).
(SC, 3/4/02)(WSJ, 10/21/05, p.A10)
1992 Mar 4, Another round of Middle East peace negotiations concluded in Washington, D.C., with Israel rejecting a plan for Palestinian elections.
1992 Mar 4, Arthur Babbitt (84), Disney animator (Mr. Magoo, Goofy), died of heart failure.
1993 Mar 4, "Goodbye Girl" opened at Marquis Theater in NYC for 188 performances.
1993 Mar 4, Authorities announced the arrest of Mohammad Salameh, a suspect in the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. Salameh was later convicted of playing a key role.
1994 Mar 4, US Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell announced he would not seek re-election.
1994 Mar 4, In Florida Eddie Wayne Davis raped and killed Kimberly Waters (11), the daughter of a woman that he had briefly dated. He threw her body in a commercial trash bin. Davis was convicted in 1995 and executed on July 10, 2014.
{Florida, USA, Kids, Murder, Rape}
(http://tinyurl.com/ovr7cod)(SFC, 7/11/14, p.A14)
1994 Mar 4, In New York, four extremists were convicted of the World Trade Center bombing that killed six people and injured more than a thousand.
1994 Mar 4, The space shuttle STS-62, Columbia 16, blasted off on a two-week mission.
1994 Mar 4, John Candy (b.1950), Canadian born actor and comedian, died in Durango, Mexico.
(AP, 3/4/99)(www.imdb.com/name/nm0001006/)
1994 Mar 4, In Egypt machine-gun fire fatally wounded a German woman on a Nile cruise ship at Abu Tig.
(SFC,11/19/97, p.C2)
1995 Mar 4, President Clinton, in his weekly radio address, said spending cuts proposed by congressional Republicans would gut safe-school and anti-drug programs needed to protect children.
1996 Mar 4, Jury selection began in Little Rock, Ark., in the trial of President Clinton's Whitewater partners, James and Susan McDougal, and the man who succeeded him as Arkansas governor, Jim Guy Tucker. James McDougal and Tucker were later convicted of fraud and conspiracy; Susan McDougal was convicted of fraud.
1996 Mar 4, Comedian Minnie Pearl died in Nashville, Tennessee, at age 83.
1996 Mar 4, In Spain the conservative Popular Party under Jose Maria Aznar won general elections over PM Felipe Gonzalez and ended 13 years of Socialist rule. The national government created an Environment Ministry. Previously the environment was the responsibility of the Public Works Ministry.
(WSJ, 3/4/96, p. A-1)(SFEC, 4/20/97, p.A17)
1996 Mar 4, A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Tel Aviv shopping center, killing 13 people in the fourth deadly attack in nine days.
(WSJ, 3/5/96, p. A-1)(AP, 3/4/01)
1997 Mar 4, Calling creation of life "a miracle that reaches beyond laboratory science," President Clinton barred spending federal money on human cloning.
1997 Mar 4, President Clinton surveyed tornado destruction in his home state of Arkansas and also declared Ohio and Kentucky disaster areas because of floods.
1997 Mar 4, Comet Hale-Bopp directly above the Sun (1.04 AU).
1997 Mar 4, Two Albanian air force pilots diverted their MiG-15 fighter to southern Italy after being ordered to fire on civilians. Tanks were reported in Gjirokastra and in Vlore, the hotel complex owned by Vefa, the biggest investment scheme still officially intact, was destroyed along with 6 factories.
(SFC, 3/5/97, p.A8)
1997 Mar 4, Brazil Senate allowed women to wear slacks.
1997 Mar 4, In Chile the prison population was reported to be 25,000 people. They were encouraged to participate as employees in a joint government-business program.
(SFC, 3/4/97, p.A5)
1997 Mar 4, It was announced that the US was providing as much as $20 million in military supplies to Eritrea.
(WSJ, 3/4/97, p.A14)
1997 Mar 4, Russia launched Zeya Start-1, a test satellite, aboard a modified SS-25 ballistic missile from the new Svobodny cosmodrome in the Amur region of eastern Siberia.
(WSJ, 3/5/97, p.A1)(SC, 3/4/02)
1997 Mar 4, In Spain the matadors agreed to go back to work but the bull horn issue remained unsettled.
(SFC, 3/5/97, p.A9)
1998 Mar 4, The Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment at work can be illegal even when the offender and victim are of the same gender.
(WSJ, 1/4/98, p.R4)(AP, 3/4/99)
1998 Mar 4, The US House approved a special referendum in Puerto Rico that would allow voters to choose one of 3 options: continued commonwealth status, statehood or independence.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A5)
1998 Mar 4, A judge ordered Miami to hold a new mayoral election, saying widespread absentee-ballot fraud played a role in the victory of Xavier Suarez the previous fall.
1999 Mar 4, In North Carolina a military jury acquitted Captain Richard J. Ashby of all charges in the 1998 death of 20 people, who died when his jet cut the cable of their ski gondola in the Italian Alps. Italian authorities were outraged,
(SFC, 3/5/99, p.A1)(AP, 3/4/00)
1999 Mar 4, Manuel Noriega's sentence was reduced from 40 years to 30 by a federal judge in Florida. He would be eligible for parole in 2007.
(WSJ, 3/5/99, p.A1)
1999 Mar 4, Retired Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, who wrote the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide, died in Arlington, Va., at age 90.
(SFC, 3/5/99, p.A1) (AP, 3/4/00)
1999 Mar 4, In Brazil Arminio Fraga, the new Central Bank president, raised the interest rates to 45%.
(SFC, 3/5/99, p.D2)
1999 Mar 4, Congo rebels who served under Mobutu Sese Seko took the town of Bolobo, upstream from Kinshasa.
(SFC, 3/5/99, p.D2)
1999 Mar 4, In Nigeria the outgoing military government freed 47 political prisoners including Gen'l. Oladipo Diya.
(SFC, 3/5/99, p.D2)
1999 Mar 4, In Russia Pres. Yeltsin ordered Boris Berezovsky to be fired from his job with the Commonwealth of Soviet States.
(WSJ, 3/5/99, p.A1)
1999 Mar 4, In Turkey a female suicide bomber killed herself and wounded 3 civilians in the town of Batman.
(SFC, 3/5/99, p.A14)
1999 Mar 4, Ugandan soldiers killed 10 more Rwandan rebels inside Congo for the killing of foreign tourists.
(SFC, 3/8/99, p.A16)
1999 Mar 4, In Venezuela the bodies of 3 Americans, who were kidnapped Feb 25 in Colombia, were found shot to death. Ingrid Washinawatok (41), Lahe'ena'e Gay (39) and Terence Freitas (24) were coordinating a campaign for the U'wa Indians when they were abducted. Raul Reyes, senior commander of FARC, later said that local commander Gildardo and 3 rebels seized and executed the 3 Americans without authorization. In Dec. German Briceno, a FARC officer, was indicted in absentia on murder charges along with Gustavo Bogota, a member of the U'wa Indian tribe. In 2000 Nelson Vargas was captured in Saravena and identified as the guerrilla commander responsible for the kidnap-slayings. Police later said Gildardo Gomez was the commander suspected in the killings, but still held Vargas on suspicion of rebel membership.
(SFC, 3/6/99, p.A10)(SFC, 3/11/99, p.A10)(SFC, 12/22/99, p.A18)(SFC, 3/24/00, p.D3)(SFC, 3/27/00, p.A13)
2000 Mar 4, Ahead of Super Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush charged John McCain with "clouded" education views while the Arizona senator asked "Where the outrage?" over a late surge of money to pay for negative TV ads.
2000 Mar 4, On the AIDS crises it was reported that 1 in every 50 black men in the US was HIV positive. It was also reported that 1 in 300 of all people in the US were HIV positive.
(SFEC, 3/5/00, Z1 p.1)
2000 Mar 4, In Bangladesh a tornado hit the northwest Natore district and left nearly 3000 people homeless. 50 people were injured.
(SFC, 3/6/00, p.A12)
2000 Mar 4, In Beijing, China, 2,900 delegates from 32 provinces and regions gathered for the 10-11 day session of the Ninth National People's Congress. During the session Hu Changqing, a former official in Jiangxi province, was scheduled to be executed for taking bribes worth $658,000.
(SFC, 3/4/00, p.C1)(SFEC, 3/5/00, p.A22)
2001 Mar 4, President George W. Bush dedicated a $4 billion aircraft carrier in honor of former President Reagan. Nancy Reagan christened the ship. It was commissioned in 2003.
(AP, 3/4/02)(SSFC, 7/13/03, p.A2)
2001 Mar 4, The US Coast Guard found a record 13 (8) tons of cocaine aboard a 152-foot fishing vessel, the Svesda Maru, in a Belize-flagged vessel 1,500 miles south of San Diego. The ship's crew were from Russia and Ukraine.
(SFC, 5/15/01, p.A5)(SFC, 5/30/01, p.A10)
2001 Mar 4, An oceanside memorial was held in Hawaii for 9 people from a Japanese fishing boat who were killed when their vessel was accidentally sunk by a U.S. submarine.
2001 Mar 4, Singer Glenn Hughes, the biker character in the disco band the Village People, died in New York at age 50.
2001 Mar 4, Former Ohio 4-term Gov. James A. Rhodes died at age 91.
(SFC, 3/5/01, p.A24)
2001 Mar 4, Harold E. Stassen (93), former Minnesota 3-term Gov. and perennial presidential candidate, died in Bloomington, Minn. In 2013 Alec Kirby, David G. Dalin and Jon F. Rothmann authored "Harold E. Stassen: The Life and Perennial Candidacy of the Progressive Republican."
(SFC, 3/5/01, p.A24)(AP, 3/4/02)(SSFC, 6/9/13, p.F7)
2001 Mar 4, In England a bomb exploded in London outside the BBC studios. It was the work of the Real IRA and one person was injured.
(SFC, 3/5/01, p.A12)(WSJ, 3/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 4, In Israel a Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and 3 Israelis in Netanya.
(SSFC, 3/4/01, p.A27)
2001 Mar 4, Macedonia sealed its border with Kosovo after 3 soldiers were killed in heavy fighting with ethnic Albanian rebels, led by Ali Ahmeti. Up to 200 people were killed during the seven-month conflict with Macedonian armed forces.
(WSJ, 3/5/01, p.A1)(Econ, 4/14/12, p.62)(AFP, 4/17/18)
2001 Mar 4, In Portugal a bridge over the Douro River near Penafiel collapsed and at least 70 people in a bus and 2 cars plunged into the river and were killed.
(SFC, 3/5/01, p.A12)(WSJ, 3/5/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 3/6/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 4, In Saudi Arabia Muslim pilgrims climbed Mount Arafat as some 2 million gathered for the annual hajj to Mecca.
(WSJ, 3/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 4, Swiss voters rejected membership talks with the EU by 77%.
(SFC, 3/5/01, p.A11)
2002 Mar 4, At least 7 US soldiers were killed while trying to drop off reconnaissance teams in fighting in Paktia province. 6 of the soldiers were killed in an effort to try to rescue a 7th during Operation Anaconda. Air Force Tech. Sgt. John A. Chapman saved the lives of a special operations teams by sacrificing himself to stop the enemy from shooting down a helicopter carrying reinforcements to the battle on Takur Ghar. In 2018 Chapman was awarded the Medal of Honor.
(SFC, 3/5/02, p.A1)(SFC, 3/6/02, p.A1,12)(http://tinyurl.com/y6wpj4mv)(SFC, 8/23/18, p.A5)
2002 Mar 4, Roy Porter (b.1946), British historian, died. He had recently published "Madness: A Brief History." His other books included "The Greatest Benefit to Mankind" (1997), a survey of the history of medicine.
(www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/mar/05/guardianobituaries.obituaries)(SSFC, 4/21/02, p.M3)(WSJ, 10/4/08, p.W8)
2002 Mar 4, European Union's 15 members ratified the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, but failed to set pollutant-emission levels to meet the accord's targets.
2002 Mar 4, El Salvador declared a state of emergency in the town of Berlin after some 60 horses died from apparent anthrax infections.
(SFC, 3/5/02, p.A7)
2002 Mar 4, In Ahmadabad, India, Hindu militants razed the 80-year-old Manchaji mosque and erected a foot-tall statue of the monkey god Hanuman in its place. The death toll from Hindu-Muslim violence in the region climbed to 544.
(SFC, 3/5/02, p.A6)
2002 Mar 4, Israeli forces killed at least 14 Palestinians including the wife of an Islamic militant and their 3 children.
(SFC, 3/5/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 4, In Kashmir separatist violence left at least 17 people dead. This included 8 Islamic militants killed by Indian soldiers.
(SFC, 3/5/02, p.A7)
2002 Mar 4, In Kosovo Ibrahim Rugova, moderate Albanian leader, became Kosovo's 1st president and joined PM Bajram Rexhepi to push for independence.
(SFC, 3/5/02, p.A7)
2003 Mar 4, It was later reported that CNN top people found out that the US war on Iraq would begin Mar 19. The Army's oldest armored division, "Old Ironsides," got orders to head for the Persian Gulf as the total of U.S. land, sea and air forces arrayed against Iraq or preparing to go neared 300,000.
(SFC, 4/3/03, p.W2)(AP, 3/4/04)
2003 Mar 4, The Bank of Canada raised its key overnight interest rate to 3 percent from 2.75 percent, as it fretted about a steeper inflation rate.
2003 Mar 4, In the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir a bus fell into a deep gorge, killing at least nine people and injuring 52.
2003 Mar 4, Iran called for UN-supervised elections in neighboring Iraq and urged the divided Iraqi opposition to reconcile with Pres. Saddam Hussein as part of a plan aimed at averting a US-led war on Iraq.
2003 Mar 4, In northern Iraq Kurdish soldiers killed 5 Muslim men in a possible case of mistaken identity.
(AP, 3/4/03)(SFC, 3/5/03, p.A10)
2003 Mar 4, Israeli troops killed one Palestinian and wounded another in an shootout at an Internet cafe in the West Bank.
2003 Mar 4, In the Philippines a bomb hidden in a backpack exploded at the Davao airport on Mindanao, killing 21 people and wounding some 150.
(AP, 3/4/03)(SFC, 3/5/03, p.A1)
2004 Mar 4, It was reported that new nickels honoring the 1803 Louisiana Purchase have been shipped to the Federal Reserve. A new Jefferson nickel was set for 2005.
(SFC, 4/25/03, B3)(SFC, 11/7/03, p.A2)(AP, 3/4/04)(SFC, 9/14/04, p.D3)
2004 Mar 4, George Pake (b.1924), founding head (1970-1978) of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), died in Tucson, Ariz.
(SFC, 10/25/00, p.D1)(SFC, 3/11/04, p.C5)
2004 Mar 4, Brunei officials reported that two retired senior army and police intelligence officers and a businessman had been jailed without trial for leaking government secrets, some of them posted on the Internet.
2004 Mar 4, Mounir el Motassadeq, the only person in the world convicted in the 9-11 attacks, won a retrial in a German appeals court.
2004 Mar 4, Israeli forces raided the southern Gaza town of Rafah, killing a 14-year-old boy, bulldozing houses and damaging the water and electricity networks.
2004 Mar 4, Ukrainian authorities pulled a private station off the air, four days after it began broadcasting U.S.-funded Radio Liberty's shortwave programming.
2005 Mar 4, Pres. Bush nominated career scientist Stephen L. Johnson (53) to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
(SFC, 3/5/05, p.A1)(AP, 3/4/06)
2005 Mar 4, The DJIA rose 107 to 10,940, its highest level since June, 2001.
(SFC, 3/5/05, p.A10)
2005 Mar 4, Martha Stewart returned from prison to the multi-million-dollar estate where she will remain under the watch of federal authorities while trying to revive her homemaking empire.
2005 Mar 4, India approved cultivation of genetically modified cotton in its fertile northern region, rejecting demands from anti-biotechnology activists.
2005 Mar 4, American troops fired on a car taking Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad's airport and wounded her. Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence officer who negotiated her freedom, was hit by the gunfire and died in her arms. Sgrena returned to Italy the next day. In 2007 an Italian court threw out the case against the US soldier charged in the shooting of Calipari.
2005 Mar 4, In Iraq Pvt. Gardi Gardev, a Bulgarian soldier, was killed by friendly fire." President Georgi Parvanov summoned U.S. Ambassador James Pardew on Mar 7 and complained about the lack of coordination between coalition troops in Iraq.
2005 Mar 4, Nepal government forces killed at least 30 Maoist rebels in the western district of Arghakhanchi.
2005 Mar 4, In southwestern Pakistan police said Ramzan Mengal, an Islamic militant accused of killing as many as 130 Shiite Muslims over recent years, was arrested in Quetta.
2005 Mar 4, Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a police station, sparking a gunfight that left three people wounded.
2005 Mar 4, Tribes from western Sudan and the neighboring Central African Republic signed a peace charter in a bid to end cross-border clashes.
2005 Mar 4, Swiss police said they have detained five purported Islamic extremists suspected of running Web sites that showed the execution of hostages and provided details of how to make bombs and carry out attacks.
2005 Mar 4, Ukraine's former interior minister was found dead of an apparent suicide, just before he was to meet with prosecutors for questioning about the 2000 slaying of an investigative journalist. The minister had two shots to the head.
(AP, 3/4/05)(Econ, 4/2/11, p.50)
2005 Mar 4, President Hugo Chavez said Venezuela wants to supply crude oil to India, Asia's third-biggest consumer, under a long-term agreement.
2006 Mar 4, The US Army announced it would start a criminal investigation into the 2004 friendly fire death of former professional football player Patrick Tillman in Afghanistan.
2006 Mar 4, Jenny McCarthy received 3 Razzies: worst picture, worst actress and worst screenplay as producer, for the gross-out romantic comedy "Dirty Love."
(SSFC, 3/5/06, p.A2)
2006 Mar 4, Some 10,000 fans paid $50 to $450 to watch the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.
(WSJ, 3/15/06, p.A1)
2006 Mar 4, A bomb killed four Afghan intelligence agents when it blew up under their vehicle as they were driving near the southern provincial capital of Lashkargah in Helmand province.
2006 Mar 4, In Afghanistan Taliban militia fatally shot Mohammad Hashim, a UN engineer, in the Bala Buluk district of Farah province, where he was doing rural rehabilitation work.
2006 Mar 4, Algeria began releasing former Islamist fighters from prison, fulfilling an amnesty aimed at promoting national reconciliation after more than a decade of conflict.
(Reuters, 3/4/06)
2006 Mar 4, Detectives investigating Britain's largest cash robbery arrested a 28-year-old man on suspicion of the Feb 22 robbery in south London. Five people have been charged so far in the case.
2006 Mar 4, Cambodia deported an American for running websites that promoted the impoverished kingdom as a destination for people who wanted to end their lives. Californian Roger Graham, 57, who owned the Blue Mountain Coffee and Internet Cafe in the quiet coastal backwater of Kampot, had advertised his avid support of euthanasia, or mercy killing, on his websites www.euthanasiaincambodia.com and www.asian-hearts.com.
2006 Mar 4, Chechnya's Parliament unanimously approved Ramzan Kadyrov (29), the head of a security force widely accused of human rights abuses, as PM of the war-battered republic.
2006 Mar 4, A government spokesman said China's military budget will rise 14.7% this year to $35.3 billion. China's National People's Congress, largely a rubber-stamp for decisions taken at the top level of the Chinese Communist Party, approved a 14.7% increase in military spending to 35 billion dollars (27 billion euros). Although this is paltry compared to the 419 billion dollar (325 billion euro) US defense budget in 2006, the Pentagon last year estimated that China's defense spending was two to three times the publicly announced figure.
2006 Mar 4, The French the defense ministry said a French special forces officer was killed in clashes with Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan. This was the second French soldier to be killed in action in Afghanistan.
2006 Mar 4, Youssef Fofana, the suspected leader of a gang accused of torturing to death a young Jewish man near Paris, was extradited from the Ivory Coast to France.
2006 Mar 4, In India hundreds of Hindu protesters rampaged through the town of Sanvodem in the coastal state of Goa, storming a police station, beating officers, looting Muslim shops and burning vehicles and buildings.
2006 Mar 4, Indonesia raised its death toll due to the H5N1 strain of bird flu to 21 after tests confirm that a boy (3) had succumbed to H5N1 in central Java.
2006 Mar 4, Iraq's Kurdish president said that he joined Sunni Arab and secular politicians in trying to block the Shiite Muslim prime minister from a second term because Ibrahim al-Jaafari has become a divisive figure.
2006 Mar 4, The Arab League said it will open offices in Iraq for the first time since the 2003 US-led invasion, part of its efforts to help reconcile the country's Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish communities.
2006 Mar 4, President Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf recommitted their nations to the difficult task of hunting down terrorists still hiding here and across the globe. Police detained former cricket star Imran Khan and arrested dozens of his opposition party's supporters to block a rally against President Bush. Bush praised Pakistan's fight against terrorism as unfaltering but turned down an appeal for the same civilian nuclear help the US intends to give India.
2006 Mar 4, Final results showed that South Africa's governing African National Congress won two-thirds of council seats in local elections. President Thabo Mbeki vowed to repay the confidence shown by voters in the ruling African National Congress and speed up delivery of services to millions of poor blacks.
2006 Mar 4, Supporters of the Basque separatist group ETA clashed with riot police in northern Spain to protest the deaths of two jailed members of the militant organization.
2006 Mar 4, Sri Lanka said it will put the clock back by half an hour and revert to its original time after a 10-year experiment that largely failed to save energy. "The change will take place from the Tamil and Sinhala New Year on April 13."
2006 Mar 4, An armed group attacked a Tamil Tiger rebel checkpoint in eastern Sri Lanka, killing two guerrillas in what the rebels called a "serious" violation of the country's cease-fire.
2006 Mar 4, Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir repeated his country's refusal to allow any UN-led troop intervention in strife-torn Darfur, but still insisted Khartoum was committed to working with the world community.
2007 Mar 4, NAACP President Bruce S. Gordon announced he was quitting the civil rights organization after just 19 months at the helm, citing growing strain with board members over the group's management style and future operations.
2007 Mar 4, Stephen Grant (37) of Mount Clemens, suspected of killing and dismembering his wife, was captured as he fled searchers, running through snow in northern Michigan. Tara Grant (34) was last seen on Feb 9. Stephen Grant reported her missing five days later.
2007 Mar 4, In NYC a videotape captured Rose Morat (101) as she repulsed an attack by a mugger in the vestibule of her apartment. A suspect was later arrested.
(SFC, 4/28/07, p.A3)
2007 Mar 4, Thomas Eagleton (b.1929), former US Senator from Missouri, died. In 1972 he served as George McGovern's nominee for vice-president until it was revealed that he had been hospitalized for psychiatric depression.
(SFC, 3/5/07, p.D5)
2007 Mar 4, In eastern Afghanistan a suicide attack by an explosives-filled minivan hit an American convoy. US Marine Special Forces fleeing a militant ambush opened fire on civilian cars and pedestrians on a busy highway in Nangarhar province. As many as 19 people were killed and 34 wounded in the violence. The marine unit involved was soon ordered to leave Afghanistan. The attack was carried out by a breakaway faction of Hezb-e-Islami that was once led by Younis Khalis, a former mujahedeen commander who died last year. The group is now believed to be led by a son of Khalis. A US-led coalition airstrike destroyed a mud-brick home, killing nine people from four generations of an Afghan family during a clash between Western troops and militants. On May 23, 2008, Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, the commander of US Marine Corps Forces, Central Command, decided not to bring charges after reviewing the findings of a special tribunal.
(AP, 3/4/07)(AP, 3/5/07)(SFC, 3/24/07, p.A8)(SFC, 1/9/08, p.A13)(AP, 5/24/08)
2007 Mar 4, In Algeria suspected Islamic militants attacked a police checkpoint with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, killing five officers and wounding three others.
2007 Mar 4, In the Central African Republic French fighter jets destroyed several rebel vehicles in retaliation for an attack on French troops.
2007 Mar 4, Chad named the former rebel leader Mahamat Nour Abdelkerim as its new defense minister in a major reshuffle of the volatile central African country's government.
2007 Mar 4, China said it will boost military spending by 17.8% this year, continuing more than a decade of double-digit annual increases that have raised concerns among the United States and China's neighbors.
2007 Mar 4, Copenhagen police arrested dozens of people in a third straight day of unrest triggered by the eviction of squatters from a disputed youth center.
2007 Mar 4, In East Timor International security forces backed by helicopters raided a rebel hide-out and killed four suspected insurgents, though their leader Alfredo Reinado escaped.
2007 Mar 4, Voting stations opened in Estonia's first Parliamentary election since joining the EU. PM Andrus Ansip's center-right Reform Party narrowly won parliamentary elections. Ansip's party had 27.8% of the votes, ahead of the left-leaning Center Party led by political veteran Edgar Savisaar, which had 26.1%. Ansip pledged to preserve the market-friendly policies credited with the Baltic nation's impressive growth. President Toomas Hendrik Ilves likely will ask Ansip to form the next government of the country of 1.3 million.
2007 Mar 4, In Ethiopia a group of French tourists who had also been missing since March 1 arrived in Mekele, the Afar region's capital, and said they had not been kidnapped, as was previously believed. Eritrea denied accusations that it was behind the disappearance of five kidnapped Britons.
2007 Mar 4, In eastern India suspected communist rebels assassinated lawmaker Sunil Mahato as he watched a soccer game being played. Two bodyguards and a civilian also were killed.
2007 Mar 4, Hundreds of US soldiers entered the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in the first major push into the area since an American-led security sweep began last month around Baghdad. US troops raided a mosque in Baghdad and captured three suspected insurgents hiding inside. At least 10 people died in violence, including three women and a child, all Shiite pilgrims heading to the holy city of Karbala, killed in a roadside bombing in Hillah. Two policemen were killed and three hurt in clashes the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. A British-Iraqi raid on a police intelligence headquarters in southern Iraq found 30 prisoners with signs of torture and an alleged death squad leader was captured.
2007 Mar 4, Ivory Coast's Pres. Laurent Gbagbo signed a peace accord with Guillaume Soro, the country's main rebel leader, calling for a new government to hold elections by the year's end, and for the dismantling of a vast buffer zone separating the two sides. The latest deal is the result of meetings between the two camps that started in early February under the oversight of Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore.
2007 Mar 4, An aide said PM Shinzo Abe will stand by Japan's 1993 apology over forcing Asian women to have sex with Japanese troops in the last century, after the leader's denial that Tokyo used coercion caused an international uproar.
2007 Mar 4, Officials said Kuwait's Cabinet has resigned in a widely expected move that pre-empts a vote of no-confidence in the health minister, who is a member of the ruling family. Kuwaiti governments have previously pre-empted votes of no-confidence by resigning and Cabinet reshuffles. Such moves have even led to dissolving parliament.
2007 Mar 4, Avalanches killed at least five skiers in the Swiss and French Alps following days of heavy snow.
2007 Mar 4, Thirty-six Yemenis with alleged ties to al-Qaida went on trial on charges they planned to take part in foiled suicide attacks on oil and gas installations in the country.
2008 Mar 4, John McCain clinched the Republican nomination. Hillary Clinton won primaries in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island, halting Barack Obama's winning streak. Obama won in Vermont. Obama came away with a large share of delegates, too, in counting that continued.
2008 Mar 4, In Vermont voters in Brattleboro and Marlboro passed a nonbinding, symbolic measure that instructs town police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution" and "extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them."
(Reuters, 3/5/08)
2008 Mar 4, Platinum prices spiked to an all-time peak at $2,279.25.
2008 Mar 4, Gary Gygax (b.1938), co-creator of the role-playing Dungeons & Dragons game, died in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Gygax and Don Kaye had founded Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) in 1973. In 1974 Gygax and David Arneson published D&D. In 1997 TSR was sold to Wizards of the Coast.
(WSJ, 3/8/08, p.A7)(Econ, 3/15/08, p.102)
2008 Mar 4, In eastern Afghanistan a suicide car bomb exploded near a government compound, killing a policeman. The bombing, claimed by the extremist Taliban, was the fifth in a week in the eastern province of Khost. In southwestern Nimroz province Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint, and the ensuing two-hour gunbattle left three policemen dead. Near Hyderabad, Afghanistan, an Afghan man was killed. Master Sgt. Joseph D. Newel faced allegations in the case that included premeditated murder; wrongfully mutilating a dead body; larceny; and violation of a lawful order. In 2009 Newell was acquitted of premeditated murder and mutilation.
(AFP, 3/4/08)(AP, 3/5/08)(http://shadowspear.com/vb/showthread.php?t=13756)(SFC, 2/26/09, p.A4)
2008 Mar 4, Ethnic Armenian and Azerbaijani forces exchanged fire for hours near the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan warned it could try to reclaim the disputed region. Soldiers were killed and wounded on both sides. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said in a statement that its two Armenian affiliates halted the broadcasts to comply with an emergency decree that allows media to only report news that is sanctioned by the government.
(AP, 3/5/08)(WSJ, 3/5/08, p.A1)
2008 Mar 4, The Reserve Bank of Australia raised its official cash-rate target by a quarter point to 7.25% in an effort to tighten credit as inflation remained problematic.
(WSJ, 3/5/08, p.A2)
2008 Mar 4, An Australian aquaculture company claimed a world first in artificially breeding endangered southern bluefin tuna.
2008 Mar 4, The US embassy in Sarajevo said the US government has cut development aid to the political party of Bosnian Serb PM Milorad Dodik because of its nationalist policy.
2008 Mar 4, In Brazil police used rubber bullets and tear gas to remove 900 activists from a tree farm they had invaded to highlight allegations its Swedish-Finnish operators violated a law forbidding foreign companies from owning certain lands.
2008 Mar 4, The Bank of Canada slashed its overnight interest rate by 50 basis points for the first time since November 2001, lowering it to 3.5% and signaling further cuts to shield the economy from the damaging effects of the US slowdown.
(Reuters, 3/4/08)
2008 Mar 4, China said its defense spending would jump 17.6 percent this year but insisted the rise was moderate, amid a flare-up in tensions with the United States over Beijing's growing military muscle.
2008 Mar 4, China and Russia scuttled a Western attempt to introduce a resolution on Iran's nuclear defiance at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
2008 Mar 4, Costa Rican police detained 14 people, including a family court judge and a lawyer, on suspicion of participating in a scheme in which mothers allegedly were paid to give up their babies.
2008 Mar 4, In Cairo US Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice said she has released $100 million in military aid to Egypt after telling the US Congress the money was necessary for national security reasons. Police arrested 54 members of Egypt's largest opposition movement, the first day for registration of candidates for key local council elections.
(Reuters, 3/4/08)(AP, 3/4/08)
2008 Mar 4, France pinned the blame on Sudanese forces for a shooting near the border with Chad that left one French soldier wounded and another missing and asked Sudanese authorities for help in locating the missing soldier. Sgt. Gilles Pollin's remains were formally identified Mar 7 and flown to Paris from Khartoum.
2008 Mar 4, Israel said it would return to Hamas-ruled Gaza if necessary as it mounted new airstrikes on the Palestinian territory after militants fired more rockets at a nearby Israeli town. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared that peace is his first choice in the Mideast and visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice exhorted Israel to "spare innocent life" in the latest upsurge in fighting in Hamas-ruled Gaza. Palestinians fired three rockets at Israel. About 25 Israeli armored vehicles rumbled into southern Gaza and clashed with militants after nightfall. A 1-month-old baby was killed in the crossfire. A local Islamic Jihad leader was killed and 8 militants and 3 civilians were wounded.
2008 Mar 4, Israel has said Hezbollah is rearming and has an arsenal that includes 10,000 long-range rockets and 20,000 short-range rockets in southern Lebanon, according to a report from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
2008 Mar 4, Italian police said they have seized 150 million euros of property and goods from feuding Calabrian mafia clans who are under investigation for the murder of six Italians outside a pizzeria in Germany last year.
(Reuters, 3/4/08)
2008 Mar 4, Ian Paisley, the fiery Protestant preacher who reversed a lifetime of stubbornness to embrace an unlikely peace, announced his retirement as leader of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government with Roman Catholics.
2008 Mar 4, In Pakistan 2 suicide bombers blew themselves up at a prestigious naval college in the eastern city of Lahore, killing at least five people and injuring 19.
2008 Mar 4, The Rwandan government and the UN signed a deal allowing detainees sentenced by the UN-backed court on the Rwanda genocide to be jailed in Rwanda.
2008 Mar 4, In Sri Lanka 7 rebels were killed in ongoing clashes as government forces pushed deeper into Tamil Tiger territory. 3 days of fighting left at least 90 guerrillas and nine government soldiers dead.
2008 Mar 4, In southern Sudan activists warned that the 2006 arrival of White Nile Petroleum Company (WNPOC), a consortium led by Malaysia's Petronas, in Unity State threatens the Sudd wetlands, the world's largest maze of swamps, lagoons and tributaries. Villagers said thousands were forcefully evicted to make way for the low-sulphur crude oil venture. They lost ancestral homes, died from contamination and saw livelihoods jeopardized.
2008 Mar 4, Officials said Turkey is ready to take part in a planned Mediterranean Union after winning assurances that it is not meant as a substitute for Ankara's eventual EU membership.
2008 Mar 4, Ugandan troops clashed with rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army inside neighboring Sudan.
2008 Mar 4, Ukraine's natural gas company warned that if Russia further cuts its gas supplies, it could begin diverting shipments intended for western Europe.
2009 Mar 4, The Obama administration kicked off a new program that's designed to help up to 9 million borrowers stay in their homes through refinanced mortgages or loans that are modified to lower monthly payments. President Barack Obama approved an order to overhaul the way the US government awards contracts for work to be done by the private sector, reversing a Bush administration policy.
2009 Mar 4, British PM Gordon Brown addressed a joint session of the US Congress and bestowed an honorary knighthood for Senator Edward Kennedy.
(Econ, 3/7/09, p.65)
2009 Mar 4, In California David Paradiso (28), a man accused of killing his girlfriend, was shot to death in a Stockton courtroom after he attacked the judge presiding over his murder trial.
2009 Mar 4, In Texas Kenneth Wayne Morris was executed for killing a Houston man in a botched burglary nearly 18 years ago.
(SFC, 3/5/09, p.A6)
2009 Mar 4, Joseph Bloch, Juilliard School pianist and scholar, died.
(WSJ, 3/19/09, p.D9)(www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/arts/music/15bloch.html)
2009 Mar 4, In Afghanistan a car bomb exploded outside the main US military base at Bagram and wounded three people. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
2009 Mar 4, In central China more than 2,000 people displaced by construction of the Three Gorges Dam clashed with police during a protest over missing resettlement payments, leaving 30 protesters injured.
2009 Mar 4, Channel tunnel operator Eurotunnel said it will pay its first ever dividend after making a net profit of 40 million euros in 2008 despite fire damage of 200 million euros (250 million dollars).
2009 Mar 4, The Finnish Parliament approved controversial legislation that allows employers to track workers' e-mails.
2009 Mar 4, Union leaders on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe agreed to suspend a 44-day-old general strike as most of their demands continue to be met.
2009 Mar 4, In India officials said investigators looking into an outbreak of hepatitis uncovered a huge operation engaged in illegally recycling hundreds of tons of used medical equipment. Gujarat state officials launched the probe 2 weeks earlier after 56 people died of hepatitis B.
(SFC, 3/5/09, p.A2)
2009 Mar 4, In Ingushetia a man fired several grenades at the home of former President Murat Zyazikov in Nazran. Zyazikov was unhurt, but the attacker died in the explosion.
2009 Mar 4, In Iraq a suicide bomber triggered an explosives-packed belt as he walked among members of a police intelligence unit in central Baghdad, killing three people. A suicide car bomb exploded at a police checkpoint in Mosul, killing at least two policemen and wounding 15 people. Gunmen killed a Sunni sheik, his wife and two sons near Samarra, 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Baghdad. Gunmen killed Brig. Gen. Salam Salman Mohammed, a senior Ministry of Interior official, as he drove to work in Baghdad.
(AP, 3/4/09)(SFC, 3/6/09, p.A2)
2009 Mar 4, The Israeli military aircraft fired upon three smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border. An Israeli missile strike in northern Gaza killed Khaled Shalan, described as a senior Islamic Jihad commander.
(AP, 3/4/09)(SFC, 3/6/09, p.A3)
2009 Mar 4, Salvatore Samperi (64), Italian director, died in his house on Lake Bracciano. He was best known for erotic comedies that challenged the morals of Italy's middle class.
2009 Mar 4, In Mexico a fight between gangs in a state prison in Ciudad Juarez left at least 20 prisoners dead.
(SFC, 3/5/09, p.A5)
2009 Mar 4, In southern Nigeria gunmen seized two passengers from a ferry near the Bonny Island gas terminal. 19 others were released shortly after the ferry was seized.
2009 Mar 4, The UN described the war zone in northern Sri Lanka as an "unfolding humanitarian catastrophe," where civilians were trapped and dying because they lacked food and medicine.
2009 Mar 4, The International Criminal Court at The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. He is the first sitting head of state the court has ordered arrested. The French medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it was pulling staff out of Darfur after the Sudanese government ordered them to leave. Sudan ordered at least 10 humanitarian groups expelled from Darfur.
2009 Mar 4, Ukrainian masked and armed security agents searched the headquarters of Naftogaz, Ukraine's natural gas company, in a raid that the firm said threatened a deal with Russia over the shipment of gas supplies to Europe. The raid was said to be connected to a criminal investigation launched this week into the alleged diversion of some 7.4 billion hryvna ($900 million) in Russian gas by officials at Naftogaz.
2009 Mar 4, Venezuela's Pres. Chavez ordered the expropriation of the rice operations of US grain giant Cargill Inc. and threatened to take over beer and food manufacturer Polar, the country's largest private company.
(WSJ, 3/5/09, p.A9)
2009 Mar 4, Zimbabwe's PM Morgan Tsvangirai made his first call for an end to international sanctions, part of his bid to start rebuilding the shattered economy. He also said the detention of political prisoners is undermining donor confidence in Zimbabwe's unity government, hurting efforts to rebuild the economy. US President Barack Obama extended sanctions against Zimbabwe, saying the troubled African nation had not resolved its political crisis.
(Reuters, 3/4/09)(AFP, 3/4/09)(Reuters, 3/5/09)
2010 Mar 4, A US congressional panel voted to label as "genocide" the World War One-era massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces, prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador from Washington.
(Reuters, 3/4/10)
2010 Mar 4, In California thousands of protesters lashed out against budget cuts to the state's educational system in the "Day of Action to Defend Public Education."
(SFC, 3/5/10, p.A1)
2010 Mar 4, In Virginia John Patrick Bedell (36) of Hollister, Calif., was killed in a shootout with Pentagon police. He died from head wounds received when the two injured officers and another officer returned fire. Bedell had driven cross-country and arrived at the Pentagon's subway entrance armed with two semiautomatic weapons. Bedell apparently left behind Internet postings resentful of the government and airing suspicions about the 9/11 attacks.
2010 Mar 4, In Australia Gurshan Singh (3), who was visiting from Punjab in northern India, disappeared from a suburban house in Melbourne. His body was found about six hours later some 30 km (20 miles) away, not far from the city's airport. On march 7 police alleged that Gursewak Dhillon (23), a part-time taxi driver who had been sharing a house with the boy and his family, was responsible for the boy's death.
2010 Mar 4, Bangladesh police said Mahbub Sarwar (26), a Dhaka-based Facebook stocks tipster with more than 10,000 followers, has been arrested on charges of illegally manipulating Bangladesh's overheated stock exchange.
2010 Mar 4, Brazil's National Health Surveillance Agency, Anvisa, ordered all 1,987 passengers and 765 crew to remain aboard the "Vision of the Seas" anchored at Buzios, while teams of doctors treat the 195 passengers suffering vomiting and diarrhea and determine the cause of their illness.
2010 Mar 4, A collection of 300 films capturing the final days of the British Empire in India and other parts of south Asia was released by the University of Cambridge. The free archive footage is available at www.s-asian.cam.ac.uk/films.html. The silent films, taken between 1911 and 1956, celebrate unique moments in history, from life after the Quetta earthquake of 1935 to the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.
2010 Mar 4, Chile's government said it had identified 279 dead, dropping the confirmed official death toll from 802. The Feb 27 magnitude-8.8 quake, one of the strongest on record, and the tsunami that followed ravaged a 700-km (435-mile) stretch of Chile's Pacific coast.
2010 Mar 4, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on the sidelines of a meeting of regional officials in Costa Rica, said the Obama administration will resume aid to Honduras that was suspended after a coup last year and urged Latin American nations to recognize the new Honduran government.
2010 Mar 4, A German court jailed four Islamic militants who dreamed of "mounting a second September 11" for a thwarted plot to attack US soldiers and civilians in Germany. The two German converts to Islam, Fritz Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider, each received 12-year jail terms. Adem Yilmaz, a Turkish citizen, got 11 years while Atilla Selek, a German of Turkish origin, was given five years in prison for what the court called a supporting role in the plot.
2010 Mar 4, Greece launched a critical 10-year bond issue, a key test of its ability to raise funds to pay off expiring debts, and dig out of a financial crisis that has shaken the EU.
2010 Mar 4, In India a stampede among thousands of poor villagers scrambling for free food and clothes at a commemorative event killed 63 women and children at a Hindu temple in Kunda, Uttar Pradesh state.
2010 Mar 4, In Iraq a string of blasts ripped through Baghdad targeting early voters and killing 17 people, raising tensions in an already nervous city as early ballots are cast for the March 14 parliamentary elections.
2010 Mar 4, Liam Adams, the brother of Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams, surrendered to Irish authorities to face 23 charges of sexually abusing his daughter. He fled to the Republic of Ireland to avoid a November 2008 Belfast hearing over the charges of abusing his daughter Aine for eight years when she was a child.
2010 Mar 4, Israel's Supreme Court reprimanded Jerusalem police for not permitting groups to protest the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in favor of Jewish settlers.
2010 Mar 4, The new Ivory Coast government announced it is now made up of 16 ministers drawn from President Laurent Gbagbo's FPI party and the former New Forces rebels as well as 11 ministers representing opposition parties.
2010 Mar 4, Throngs of Mexico City gay and lesbian couples registered for marriage licenses, the day Latin America's first gay-marriage law took effect.
2010 Mar 4, In Pakistan robbers kidnapped Sahil Saeed, a five-year-old British boy, in the town of Jhelum, about 100 km (65 miles) south of Islamabad, demanding a ransom of 100,000 pounds, prompting his mother to make a tearful plea for the return of her boy. In the northwest an overnight gunbattle left 30 insurgents and one soldier dead in the Chamarkand area of the Mohmand tribal region. Sahil Saeed was released on March 16. Spanish police arrested 3 suspects in the kidnapping in Tarragona province. They were suspected of having traveled to another European city to collect ransom money.
(AFP, 3/4/10)(SFC, 3/5/10, p.A2)(AFP, 3/16/10)(AP, 3/17/10)
2010 Mar 4, Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas government banned men from working in women's hair salons. The announcement came amid a Hamas campaign to impose Islamic customs on Gaza's 1.5 million people.
2010 Mar 4, In Rwanda 2 grenade blasts wounded 16 people in the capital, in the second wave of grenade attacks to hit Kigali in two weeks. On March 6 authorities said Deo Mushayidi, a former member of the then rebel group Rwandan Patriotic Front that ended the 1994 genocide, was arrested in neighboring Burundi. The government has also accused two former senior army officers now exiled in South Africa of being behind the attacks.
2010 Mar 4, Somali pirates hit a Spanish fishing boat off the coast of Kenya with a rocket-propelled grenade as private security on board returned fire and fended off the would-be hijackers.
2010 Mar 4, A Syrian archaeologist said more than 250 silver coins dating back to the time of Alexander the Great have been unearthed. The coins were discovered two weeks ago in a bronze box in northern Syria when a local man was digging the foundations of his new home.
2010 Mar 4, In Taiwan a powerful 6.4 earthquake and more than a dozen aftershocks jolted southern Taiwan, injuring 96 people, toppling farm houses and derailing a carriage on a high-speed train.
2010 Mar 4, Togo held presidential elections. Jean-Pierre Fabre (57), a deputy in the National Assembly and the top opposition candidate, said that this time around the people will not let the ruling party steal the election. Provisional results on March 6 indicated that Gnassingbe won 1.2 million votes, representing 60.9% of the roughly 2 million votes cast.
2010 Mar 4, Yemen's Interior Ministry said it has arrested 11 suspected al-Qaida militants during a raid on one of their homes. The father of one of the suspects was killed by police when he opened fire on police during the raid. Sharif Mobley (26), one of the 11 suspects and a US citizen of Somali descent, had worked for contractors at nuclear plants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland from 2002 to 2008, mostly hauling materials and setting up scaffolding. In 2015 Mobley was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
(AP, 3/4/10)(AP, 3/13/10)(Reuters, 12/16/15)
2011 Mar 4, A NASA rocket carrying an Earth-observation satellite plummeted into the Pacific Ocean, the second-straight blow to NASA's weakened environmental monitoring program. The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory satellite lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but fell to the sea several minutes later.
2011 Mar 4, A US Navy training exercise off the coast of San Diego led to the death of at least 3 dolphins and prompted a probe into whether the military violated a federal law protecting marine mammals.
(SSFC, 3/27/11, p.A10)
2011 Mar 4, In California two Sikh men were shot in Elk Grove, a suburb of Sacramento. Surinder Singh (65) died at the scene and Gurmej Atwal (78) was hospitalized.
(SFC, 3/7/11, p.A6)
2011 Mar 4, In Connecticut Aaron Thomas (39), a man suspected of rapes and other attacks on 17 women since 1997, was arrested in New Haven. On march 7 bail for Thomas, the suspected East Coast Rapist, was set at $1.5 million.
(SFC, 3/5/11, p.A5)(SFC, 3/8/11, p.A4)
2011 Mar 4, Mankind may have unleashed the sixth known mass extinction in Earth's history, according to a paper released by the science journal Nature. In the last five centuries, at least 80 out of 5,570 mammal species have bitten the dust, providing a clear warning of the peril to biodiversity.
2011 Mar 4, In southern Afghanistan a bombing killed a NATO service member.
2011 Mar 4, In Bahrain thousands of anti-government demonstrators streamed toward the headquarters of state television. Crackdowns by security forces have left seven dead.
2011 Mar 4, In Belgium unions disrupted public transport in parts of the country and blocked industrial sites to demand better pay rises.
2011 Mar 4, In Brazil Rio's mayor handed the key to the city to the mythical figure who reigns over the chaos of Carnival, officially opening this seaside city's five-day annual exaltation of music, booze and flesh.
2011 Mar 4, In Cambodia a speeding truck crashed into a tour bus in the southwest, leaving at least 20 dead and eight seriously injured.
2011 Mar 4, In Djibouti soldiers and police filled the streets to prevent a planned demonstration against Pres. Ismail Omar Guelleh by opposition parties. Djibouti, a city-state that lies across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, hosts several military bases, including Camp Lemonnier, the only US base in Africa.
2011 Mar 4, Egypt's top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, warned that the country's antiquity sites were being looted by criminals amid the country's political upheaval as he announced he would no longer serve in his ministerial post in the government. Hundreds of protesters attempted to storm a building belonging to the internal security service in Alexandria in an outpouring of anger at the agency blamed for some of the worst human rights violations during ousted President Hosni Mubarak's rule.
2011 Mar 4, In India police said a self-styled godman has been arrested in South Delhi for kidnapping five boys from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Prem Dass (50), a Hindu priest, was arrested for kidnapping boys as young as 10 years old to train them to be preachers. Dass was released on bail after four nights in custody.
(AP, 3/17/11)(http://tinyurl.com/4kxkkmm)
2011 Mar 4, In Iraq thousands rallied across Baghdad and elsewhere in the country in anti-government demonstrations that defied security checkpoints and a vehicle ban that forced many to walk for hours to the heart of the capital.
2011 Mar 4, In Jordan political opponents amplified their calls for the new PM Marouf al-Bakhit to resign and demanded to be brought into a unity government to usher in swift reforms to open up the kingdom's politics. Al-Bakhit was accused of rigging past elections during a previous term as prime minister from 2005-2007.
2011 Mar 4, Libyan forces bombed the rebel town of Ajdabiya as anti-regime fighters pushed the front line westwards. Forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi fired tear gas at protesters in Tripoli as a fierce crackdown that has terrorized parts of the capital the past week seemingly smothered attempts to revive demonstrations calling for the Libyan leader's ouster. Rebel witnesses in Raslanuf said at least four people have been killed in heavy clashes between pro- and anti-Kadhafi forces. Zawiyah was surrounded by Kadhafi loyalists and at least 13 people were killed by loyalists forces in fighting there. At least 10 people were killed and more than 20 wounded from fierce fighting for Ras Lanuf. Twin explosions at an arms dump at the Rajma military base just outside Benghazi killed at least 27. The cause of the blasts remained unclear.
(AFP, 3/4/11)(AP, 3/4/11)(Reuters, 3/4/11)(AFP, 3/5/11)
2011 Mar 4, Interpol said it has issued an international alert for Moammar Gadhafi and 15 other family members and close associates in a move aimed at helping enforce international sanctions against the Libyan strongman and his regime.
2011 Mar 4, Nepal's former communist rebels joined the new government, appointing four party members as ministers after a monthlong dispute with the country's new prime minister.
2011 Mar 4, North Korea blocked the repatriation of 27 citizens whose boat drifted into South Korean waters, insisting that Seoul also hand over four others who want to stay in the South. The 31 North Koreans were travelling on a fishing boat which drifted across the Yellow Sea border in thick fog on February 5.
2011 Mar 4, Oman said it has reconciled with the United Arab Emirates after Kuwaiti mediation succeeded in resolving tensions over an alleged spy ring.
2011 Mar 4, In Pakistan a bomb blast at a mosque in the northwest village of Akbar Pura killed at least 11 people.
2011 Mar 4, In Saudi Arabia about 100 members of the Shiite minority staged a protest in an eastern region of the kingdom.
2011 Mar 4, Two Nairobi-based diplomats said at least 43 Burundian and 10 Ugandan troops have been killed in Somalia since Feb. 18. A major offensive against Islamist militants began on Feb 19.
2011 Mar 4, In Turkey several thousand demonstrators, some covering their mouths with black ribbons, protested against the detention of eight journalists in a case that has drawn expressions of concern from Western governments and international media rights groups.
2011 Mar 4, The UN said its Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) has sent a team of animal health experts to North Korea to help manage an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that could worsen a food crisis.
2011 Mar 4, In northern Yemen soldiers opened fire at anti-government protesters, killing four people in the northern town of Harf Sofyan and wounding seven as demonstrations against longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh again turned deadly.
2012 Mar 4, ProFlowers of San Diego said it has suspended advertising on the Rush Limbaugh radio show, becoming the 7th advertiser in recent days to do so, due to his comments about Georgetown Univ. law student Sandra Fluke. He had called her a "slut" and a "prostitute" after she testified in support of health insurance that covers birth control for women. Within the week 42 advertisers had dropped his show.
(SFC, 3/5/12, p.A8)(SFC, 3/6/12, p.A5)(ABCNews, 3/7/12)
2012 Mar 4, In northeastern Afghanistan an avalanche buried a village of about 200 people in Badakhshan province. At least 50 people were killed with dozens trapped under the snow. At least 145 people were missing and "presumed dead" after an avalanche.
2012 Mar 4, China said its military spending would top $100 billion in 2012, a double-digit increase on last year. The figure marks a slowdown from 2011 when spending rose by 12.7%.
2012 Mar 4, In China a widowed mother of four died after setting herself on fire near the restive Kirti monastery in Aba county in Sichuan province, taking to at least 25 the number of such incidents in Tibetan-inhabited areas in the past year.
2012 Mar 4, In the Republic of Congo blasts rocked Brazzaville after a weapons depot caught fire, killing over 200 people, wounding over 1300 and forcing 2,000 to flee their homes. Small detonations continued the next day. The death toll was later set at 223. In May 23 people were charged and detained in connection with a blast.
2012 Mar 4, In Iran the family of Abdolfattah Soltani (58), a prominent human rights lawyer, was informed that he has been sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was charged with co-founding the Center for Human Rights Defenders, spreading anti-government propaganda, endangering national security and accepting an illegal prize – a reference to a German human rights prize he was awarded in 2009.
2012 Mar 4, Israel and Cyprus signed an accord to lay an underwater electricity cable between the Mediterranean nations, the first stage in a bid to transfer power between the Jewish state and mainland Europe. Additional underwater cables are to connect Cyprus and mainland Europe via Greece, which was also part of the agreement signed in Jerusalem. The deal is still subject to final approval by Israel, Cyprus and Greece, that is expected to follow the completion of a feasibility study within a year.
2012 Mar 4, The Libyan national army graduated its first batch of soldiers (225) drawn from the ranks of former rebels in the capital of Tripoli. The newly established 23 of October brigade takes its name from the date when the now ruling National Transitional Council of Libya declared "liberation" of the country from Kadhafi's 42-year-old rule.
2012 Mar 4, Libyan authorities said they have uncovered a mass grave with 163 bodies of rebel fighters and civilians in Bin Jawad, a major battleground in the 2011 civil war. The bodies were those of rebels killed between February and March 2011 in Brega, Ras Lanuf, Bin Jawad and on the outskirts of Sirte.
(SFC, 3/5/12, p.A2)(AFP, 3/5/12)
2012 Mar 4, In Nigeria motorcyclist Mustapha Sani (25) was shot in the head and chest by soldiers at a checkpoint outside a bus terminus. An irate mob lit bonfires and marched through Kano to protest the alleged shooting. Residents have complained of harassment and extortion by security personnel at checkpoints that dot the city following the January 20 coordinated Boko Haram bomb and gun attacks that killed 185 people.
2012 Mar 4, Thousands of North Korean troops and citizens rallied to slam the South Korean leader as Pyongyang again ramped up its hostile rhetoric against Seoul despite a surprise nuclear deal with the US.
2012 Mar 4, In Pakistan Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, the number two commander in the nebulous, umbrella Taliban movement was sacked as deputy chief but will remain within the organization. He was sacked at a meeting presided over by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Hakimullah Mehsud at a secret location in the northwestern tribal belt.
2012 Mar 4, Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik said he had formally asked Interpol to issue an arrest warrant for former military ruler Pervez Musharraf over the Dec 27, 2007, murder of ex-premier Benazir Bhutto. Pakistani courts have already issued warrants for his arrest over the 2006 death of Akbar Bugti, a Baluch rebel leader in the southwest.
2012 Mar 4, Russians voted in presidential elections expected to return Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin. The independent elections watchdog agency Golos said it was receiving reports of so-called "carousel voting," in which busloads of voters are driven around to cast ballots multiple times. Putin won more than 63% of the vote according to the nearly complete official returns. The opposition and independent observers said the election was marred by widespread fraud.
2012 Mar 4, In Astrakhan, Russia, Oleg Shein lost his bid for mayor to an incumbent from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. Shein alleged massive fraud and on March 16 began a hunger strike.
(Econ, 4/21/12, p.69)
2012 Mar 4, Syrian artillery gunners turned their sights on the rebel city of Rastan, killing 7 civilians, as the Red Cross delivered aid to refugees from the battered Baba Amr quarter nearby. The Syrian Observatory reported at least 44 people killed, including 14 members of the security forces who died in clashes with deserters near Daraa.
2012 Mar 4, In Yemen 185 soldiers and at least 25 Al-Qaida militants were reported killed in clashes as militants tried to take army positions in the Kud area of southern Abyan province. 56 soldiers were taken captive. Gunmen killed a senior police official in the southeastern province of Hadramawt. Gen. Mahdi Maqoula, a Saleh loyalist, stepped down. During his last week, ammunition and weapons from a military storehouse in the south disappeared, apparently smuggled out and sold.
2012 Mar 4, Zimbabwe state media reported that some 3,000 cases of typhoid have been reported in Harare since the first case was detected in a working-class suburb in January.
2013 Mar 4, In Florida a jury in Miami convicted Muslim cleric Hafiz Khan (77) of funneling thousands of dollars to the Pakistani Taliban.
(SFC, 3/5/13, p.A4)
2013 Mar 4, Cambodian translators angry that they have gone without pay for three months stopped working at the UN-backed genocide trial of former Khmer Rogue leaders, a new setback for an international justice effort that has been hobbled by conflicts with the Cambodian government.
2013 Mar 4, In CongoDRC a plane crash in the center of the eastern city of Goma killed seven people and injured three.
2013 Mar 4, Lawmakers at the Czech parliament's upper house decided to press high treason charges against outgoing president Vaclav Klaus over his controversial amnesty, which halted court proceedings in several high-profile fraud cases and financial scams.
2013 Mar 4, In Germany Berlin's mayor said that he would try to ensure that one of the last remaining sections of the Berlin Wall is preserved. After facing protests, a real estate developer put on hold until at least mid-March plans to remove a section of the wall.
2013 Mar 4, In Greece former defense minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos was sentenced to 8 years in prison for concealing assets.
(SFC, 2/5/13, p.A2)
2013 Mar 4, In India Irom Sharmila (40) was charged with attempted suicide. She has been on a 12-year hunger strike — and force fed through a tube by authorities — to protest an Indian law that suspends many human rights protections in areas of conflict.
2013 Mar 4, In Iraq a suicide attacker drove a car laden with explosives into a police checkpoint in Mosul, killing five policemen and wounding 12 other people.
2013 Mar 4, Israel launched a pair of "Palestinian-only" bus lines in the West Bank. It was presented by the government as a goodwill gesture, assailed by critics as racism and welcomed by Palestinian riders.
2013 Mar 4, Israel's Agriculture Ministry set up an emergency hotline as swarms of the destructive locusts descended on neighboring Egypt and asked Israelis to be vigilant in reporting sightings to prevent an outbreak.
2013 Mar 4, Kenyans waited in long lines to vote in the nation's presidential election. A secessionist group in Mombasa launched multiple attacks which killed 19 people.
2013 Mar 4, Mexico's Economy Department said that an agreement over trade in fresh tomatoes, proposed in early February, has been signed with US Department of Commerce officials.
2013 Mar 4, In Nigeria an attack by the radical Islamic extremist network Boko Haram killed eight people in Gwoza, Borno state.
2013 Mar 4, Royal Dutch Shell PLC said its Nigerian subsidiary lost some 150,000 barrels of oil a day over several days in late February after safety systems shut down its Nembe Creek Trunkline. Shell said the shutdowns came after thieves cut into the line.
2013 Mar 4, In Pakistan gunmen shot and killed two people returning from a funeral for Shiite Muslim victims of a massive bombing in Karachi.
2013 Mar 4, South Sudan troops killed 28 fighters led by the rebel leader David Yau Yau in the restive state of Jonglei. Ten soldiers were wounded in the fights.
2013 Mar 4, Syrian rebels pushed government troops from most of the northern city of Raqqa. Rebels launched an offensive to seize the military air base of Mannagh near the Turkish border and clashed with government forces at a historic mosque in Aleppo. Gunmen killed 48 Syrian soldiers who had crossed into Iraq for refuge. 9 Iraqi soldiers were also killed. Iraqi officials blamed the attack on al-Qaida's Iraq arm. On March 11 Al-Qaida's branch in Iraq claimed responsibility.
2013 Mar 4, In Yemen a suicide bomber blew up an explosives-filled vehicle at a pro-government militia headquarters, killing 12 people and wounding 17 in Lawder, Abyan province.
2014 Mar 4, A federal judge in New York ruled that a 2011 $9.5 billion judgement against Chevron Corp. in Ecuador was the result of fraud, committed by lawyers who sued the company for allegedly poisoning part of the Amazon rain forest.
(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A1)
2014 Mar 4, In New Jersey a gas leak and subsequent explosion killed one woman and destroyed at least 10 homes in Ewing.
(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A8)
2014 Mar 4, Chinese millionaires pleaded for the Canadian government not to throw away the immigration applications of thousands of Chinese nationals as part of its plans to end a backlogged investor program.
2014 Mar 4, In China the Shanghai Chaori Solar Energy Science and Technology Co. declared that it lacked the cash to make the full interest payment on a corporate bond. This was China's first domestic market bond default since the central bank started regulating the market in 1997.
(Econ, 3/8/14, p.75)
2014 Mar 4, Cyprus's parliament approved plans for privatizations, averting a showdown with international lenders who insist on state selloffs as part of a 10 billion-euro ($13.77 billion) bailout.
(Reuters, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, An Egyptian court ruled to ban activities of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in a move likely to fuel tension between Cairo's military-backed government and the Islamic group that rules the neighboring Gaza Strip.
2014 Mar 4, Estonia's three-term PM Andrus Ansip submitted his resignation in a long-planned move to pave the way for his successor to lead a new government into a general election next year.
(Reuters, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, The Government of India notified in the official gazette that the new state of Telangana will come into existence on 2 June 2014. India's 29th state, was carved out of Andhra Pradesh state after nearly six decades of street protests and strikes.
(AP, 4/30/14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telangana)
2014 Mar 4, India's highest court ordered that Subrata Roy (65), the head of the Sahara conglomerate, to remain in custody until a March 11 hearing over billions of dollars in an outlawed bond scheme.
(Reuters, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 4, In Iraq militants stormed a government building in Samara, killing at least 6 people including 3 police and 3 civilians. 2 suicide bombers and 5 attackers were also killed.
2014 Mar 4, In Libya Col. Adam Faraj al-Abdali was discovered early today with shots to his head and chest inside his car near a cemetery in Benghazi. Col. Al-Abdali had pioneered the use of Russian jets in Libya.
2014 Mar 4, Mexican police, soldiers and government inspectors raided 11 iron ore yards in Lazaro Cardenas following revelations that drug cartels were exporting ore to China.
(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 4, In Mexico one person was killed when illegal miners attacked the mine and offices in Guanajuato state of a silver mine run by Canada-based Great Panther Silver company.
2014 Mar 4, Moroccan forces turned back some 700 sub-Saharan African migrants who attempted to cross into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.
2014 Mar 4, Nigeria said it has released fuel from its reserves to ease a crippling shortage that has caused long queues of vehicles at petrol stations across the country. Shell closed its Forcados export terminal following an under-sea pipeline leak. The major installation held capacity to handle 400,000 barrels of crude a day.
2014 Mar 4, In the Philippines Arsina Nanoh, the vice-mayor Hadji Muhtamad town, was abducted by unidentified men near a shopping mall in the port city of Zamboanga.
2014 Mar 4, The US Coast Guard said in a statement that agents with US Customs and Border Protection have arrested two suspects and seized 750 pounds (340 kg) of pot after spotting a go-fast vessel more than 50 miles (80 km) off Puerto Rico's southwest coast.
2014 Mar 4, A Bucharest court has handed prison sentences to eight Romanian football officials for tax evasion and money laundering in connection with the transfer of 12 players.
2014 Mar 4, Vladimir Putin said that Moscow reserves the right to use its military to protect Russians in Ukraine but voiced hope it won't need to do so as he accusing the West of encouraging an "unconstitutional coup." Russia's state-controlled natural gas giant Gazprom said it will cancel a price discount for natural gas supplies to Ukraine as of April 1.
2014 Mar 4, Sri Lanka's navy said it has detained 32 Indian fishermen who were fishing illegally in Sri Lankan territorial waters less than two months after the two countries agreed to work together to combat poaching.
2014 Mar 4, Syria's military fought to take Yabroud, a town that would help Pres. al-Assad seal a link between his coastal bastions and Damascus.
2014 Mar 4, Turkey's President Abdullah Gul ordered state auditors to assess Turkey's ability to combat corruption, including in the construction sector, amid a graft investigation that has implicated senior elected officials.
(Reuters, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Kiev to show US support for the fledgling Ukraine government, and the Obama administration announced with his arrival a $1 billion energy subsidy package.
2014 Mar 4, In Vietnam dissident blogger Truong Duy Nhat (50) was sentenced to two years in prison for posting online criticism of Vietnam's authoritarian government.
2015 Mar 4, In California a reporter for the Sacramento Bee found a bag of headless chickens along railroad tracks near 19th and W streets. Over the last three months batches of headless animals have been found on 11 occasions around the city in apparent ritualistic killings.
(SFC, 3/5/15, p.D6)
2015 Mar 4, In central Florida Derek Cruice (26) died after being shot in the face early today by a sheriff's deputy attempting to serve a search warrant in a narcotics investigation.
2015 Mar 4, The US Justice Dept. released a report concluding that Missouri's Ferguson Police Dept. was routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents. The DOJ said police in Ferguson engaged in something like extortion to plug a hole in the city's finances with traffic fines and court fees.
(SFC, 3/4/15, p.A6)(Econ, 8/8/15, p.25)
2015 Mar 4, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the the city's pulbic schools will observe the Muslim holdy days of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.
(SFC, 3/5/15, p.A5)
2015 Mar 4, A US federal court in Brooklyn convicted Abid Naseer (28) of Pakistan of a failed al-Qaida subway bomb plot.
(SFC, 3/5/15, p.A5)
2015 Mar 4, In Texas Ahmed Al-Jumaili (36), an Iraqi man, was shot in Dallas as he took photos of his first ever snowstorm. He died the next day. Police on March 13 announced an arrest in the shooting of Al-Jumaili.
2015 Mar 4, Afghan security forces said they have killed dozens of militants in a military operation aimed at freeing some 30 civilian hostages kidnapped last week in Zabul province.
(Reuters, 3/4/15)
2015 Mar 4, In Bolivia a judge ordered jail for retired police Gen. Oscar Nina, who reorganized Bolivia's counter-narcotics force after President Evo Morales expelled US drug agents. He and a former personal assistant and his son were ordered held at Palmasola prison.
2015 Mar 4, In Bosnia a blizzard began and dumped 2.5 meters (8 feet) of snow on mountains around Sarajevo, isolating dozens of mountain villages and leaving them without electricity.
2015 Mar 4, The BBC aired the documentary "India's Daughter," about a fatal New Delhi gang rape in which one attacker blamed the victim. A court order in India had halted a March 1 screening.
(SFC, 3/6/15, p.A2)
2015 Mar 4, The British government said it has agreed to sell its stake in Eurostar, the high-speed rail service that connects London with Paris and Brussels through a tunnel under the English Channel, for 757 million pounds ($1.1 billion) to a group of international investors, Canada's Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec and U.K.-based Hermes Infrastructure.
2015 Mar 4, British counter-terrorism police arrested two men over an alleged "cash-for-jihad" fraud that saw elderly residents conned of money by fake police officers.
2015 Mar 4, The government of Burkina Faso ordered former president Thomas Sankara's corpse to be exhumed, potentially rekindling controversy over the 1987 assassination of one of Africa's most idolized leaders.
2015 Mar 4, Congo DRC police in Kinshasa said they have arrested a Belgian man (74) on allegations he raped two girls ages 11 and 13.
2015 Mar 4, Thousands of passengers were stranded in Denmark, Norway and Sweden as a strike by pilots of Norwegian Air Shuttle continued for a fifth day.
2015 Mar 4, France's highest appeals court paved the way for the extradition to either Russia or Ukraine of jailed Kazakh tycoon Mukhtar Ablyazov, accused of embezzling up to $6 billion from his former bank BTA.
(Reuters, 3/4/15)
2015 Mar 4, France, Portugal and Spain sealed the agreement on boosting energy cooperation in Madrid as a major step toward breaking Europe's dependence on Russian gas supplies.
2015 Mar 4, In Iraq and Syria the US and its allies staged 12 air strikes on Islamic State targets over the last 24-hours.
(Reuters, 3/4/15)
2015 Mar 4, Israel said it will double the amount of water provided to the Gaza Strip to relieve excessive use of groundwater.
(SFC, 3/5/15, p.A2)
2015 Mar 4, A court in Kenya charged 12 businessmen and former officials including an ex-minister in connection with a multi-million dollar corruption scam involving bogus state contracts. The case relates to the "Anglo-Leasing scandal," which came to light in 2004 when it emerged the government had set up a vast network of phantom companies and inflated invoices to embezzle money meant for security services.
2015 Mar 4, In Lesotho final results in the Feb 28 snap elections showed the opposition outdistancing PM Thomas Thabane's party, reversing early indications that the ruling party was in the lead.
2015 Mar 4, In Libya two unidentified warplanes bombed the airport of the western town of Zintan, allied with the country's internationally recognized government, damaging electricity systems but not the runway.
(Reuters, 3/4/15)
2015 Mar 4, Libya's National Oil Co declared force majeure at 11 oil fields after attacks by Islamists, a legal step protecting it from liability if it cannot fulfill contracts for reasons beyond its control.
2015 Mar 4, Mexican police and soldiers arrested Omar Trevino Morales, aka Z-42, in a pre-dawn raid in San Pedro Garza Garcia, a wealthy suburb of the northern city of Monterrey. He was widely considered to be the most important leader of the Zetas drug cartel.
2015 Mar 4, In Nepal a Turkish Airlines jet skidded off the wet surface at Kathmandu's Tribhuwan International Airport. Thousands of passengers were left stranded as the plane partially blocked the only runway.
2015 Mar 4, In Niger a bomb planted and remotely detonated by Boko Haram militants near the southeastern town of Diffa killed two soldiers and wounded a third.
(Reuters, 3/4/15)
2015 Mar 4, Poland's central bank cut its key interest rate by half a percentage point to a historic low of 1.5 percent amid concerns over deflation, a sustained drop in consumer prices that can hurt the economy.
2015 Mar 4, Romania began transporting natural gas to Moldova, as the former Soviet republic moves toward the European Union and becomes less dependent on Russia.
2015 Mar 4, In South Africa about 500 people fled their homes in Cape Town as a wildfire defied rain and firefighters with smoke and flames rising for a fourth day.
2015 Mar 4, In eastern Ukraine 33 miners were killed after an early morning explosion at the Zasyadko coal mine in Donetsk.
(Reuters, 3/4/15)(SFC, 3/5/15, p.A4)(AFP, 3/6/15)
2016 Mar 4, The United States and its allies targeted Islamic State militants in Iraq with 12 strikes and two in Syria. Abu Omar al-Shishani (b.1986), also known as Omar the Chechen and described by the Pentagon as the group's "minister of war", was targeted near the town of al-Shadadi in Syria. Al-Shishani was critically wounded and reportedly died on March 14. The IS confirmed his death on July 13.
(Reuters, 3/5/16)(AFP, 3/13/16)(SFC, 3/16/16, p.A2)(Reuters, 7/14/16)
2016 Mar 4, Writer Pat Conroy (b.1945) died at his home in Beaufort, South Carolina. His novels included "The Great Santini" (1976) and "The Prince of Tides" (1986).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Conroy)(SSFC, 3/6/16, p.A9)
2016 Mar 4, Moody's lowered the credit ratings of Bahrain and Oman and placed the remaining Gulf oil exporters on review for downgrade, saying low crude prices have weakened their economies.
2016 Mar 4, Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was briefly detained for questioning in a federal investigation of a vast corruption scheme, fanning a political crisis that threatens to topple his successor, President Dilma Rousseff.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2016 Mar 4, At a meeting in Chad's capital N'Djamena, defense chiefs from Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania -- the so-called G5 Sahel countries -- pledged to form special units to respond quickly to threats and attacks from Islamist militants.
(Reuters, 3/5/16)
2016 Mar 4, In Colombia Ruben Dario Avila (alias Lorenzo), the top leader of the powerful Clan Usuga gang, was killed when police launched a raid on a ranch in Arboletes, Antioquia province.
2016 Mar 4, The European Commission set out a timetable to restore the fraying 26-nation Schengen open border area by year-end, warning that failure to do so would cost the European economy up to 18 billion euros ($19.7 billion) a year.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2016 Mar 4, The European Union said that it had added 16 people and 12 companies to its sanctions list following North Korea's latest nuclear test and rocket launch.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2016 Mar 4, In Indonesia the Rafelia II ferry sunk in the Bali Strait, killing 5 of the 81 people on board including a mother and her infant child.
(Reuters, 3/6/16)
2016 Mar 4, Iraq's influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has reiterated calls for government reform as thousands rallied across the country in his support.
2016 Mar 4, It was reported that a two-day UN assessment this week in Iraq found that nearly every building in Ramadi had been damaged or destroyed in frontline areas. In other districts, one in three or four buildings were damaged. Islamic State fighters still held pockets in the northern and eastern outskirts.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2016 Mar 4, The Japanese government said it had accepted a court-mediated settlement plan to halt construction work related to the relocation of a US airbase on Okinawa and resume talks with local authorities who want the base off the island.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2016 Mar 4, The World Health Organization said Laos has joined 41 countries in reporting a local transmission of Zika virus, as fears mounted over the mosquito-borne illness that has been linked to birth defects.
2016 Mar 4, In Libya Italians Gino Pollicardo (55) and Filippo Calcagno (65), kidnapped last July, were freed in a raid on Islamic State group hideouts in Sabratha near Tripoli.
2016 Mar 4, It was reported that a Lithuanian court sentenced Andrey Osurkov (29), a former paramedic with the Baltic nation's armed forces, to three years in jail for spying for neighboring Belarus.
2016 Mar 4, Former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad joined with political foes in issuing a declaration signed by 58 public figures urging PM Najib Razak to resign over corruption allegations.
2016 Mar 4, A leading court in Moldova ruled in favor of having direct national elections to choose a president rather than a vote in parliament - a concession to protesters who have been demonstrating for months against the political elite.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2016 Mar 4, In northeastern Nigeria the Borno state government said it has suspended trading in four cattle markets to prevent the sale of stolen livestock to raise funds for Boko Haram Islamists.
2016 Mar 4, In Northern Ireland a car bombing was claimed by militant nationalists. Prison officer Adrian Ismay (52) underwent surgery after the bomb went off shortly after he started driving away from his home in Belfast. He died in hospital on March 15.
(Reuters, 3/15/16)
2016 Mar 4, North Korea's state media reported that leader Kim Jong Un has ordered his military to be ready to launch nuclear strikes at any time.
(SFC, 3/5/16, p.A3)
2016 Mar 4, The Philippines seized the Jin Tang, a North Korean freighter that was covered by harsher United Nations' sanctions against Pyongyang over its nuclear program. Manila will also deport the vessel's 21 North Korean crew and will await a UN inspection team from the United Nations. The ship and crew were reported released on March 25.
(Reuters, 3/5/16)(AP, 3/25/16)
2016 Mar 4, Poland reported that five generals have submitted their resignations over the last few days. The resignations rocked the new conservative government, which is facing a barrage of criticism at home and abroad over a host of controversial reforms.
2016 Mar 4, It was reported that Romania's top court has approved a request by US authorities to extradite a convicted hacker for prosecution. Marcel Lazar Lehel, known by aliases including "Guccifer" and "Small Fume", had broken into the emails of former US President George W. Bush's family, entertainment figures and the head of the Romanian secret service.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2016 Mar 4, Russia's Defense Ministry said Turkey is shelling Kurdish units fighting against the Nusra Front in Syria, while columns of trucks with various cargo and weapons for rebels cross into Syria from Turkey daily.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2016 Mar 4, Serbia's Pres. Tomislav Nikolic dissolved Parliament and scheduled an early election for April 24 as the ruling conservatives try to cement power amid deep economic problems and tensions created by the transit of tens of thousands of migrants through the country.
(AP, 3/4/16)(SFC, 3/5/16, p.A2)
2016 Mar 4, The Slovenian parliament passed legislation late today that aimed to speed up the processing of asylum seekers in a country that in recent months has been flooded with migrants on their way to Western Europe.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2016 Mar 4, Switzerland unveiled tough draft legislation for unilateral curbs on immigration, raising the stakes in talks with Brussels on limiting the influx of foreigners from the European Union.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2016 Mar 4, The Geneva-based World Trade Organization said India has filed a complaint against the United States over its measures raising fees on some applicants for temporary work visas, mostly involving the tech sector.
2016 Mar 4, In Syria demonstrators in opposition-held areas of Aleppo, Damascus, Daraa and Homs called for the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
2016 Mar 4, Major Syrian insurgent group Jaish al-Islam group said the government was mobilizing forces to capture more territory, and a ceasefire was not possible while Damascus and its allies kept up attacks, signaling risks to an agreement that has slowed fighting. Jaish al-Islam denied Russian reports that some of its members had signed ceasefire agreements.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2016 Mar 4, In Syria two air strikes hit the edge of the town of Douma in Eastern Ghouta and one person was killed. The strikes were reportedly conducted by either Syrian or Russian planes. US-backed fighters from the Free Syrian Army's Southern Front killed one IS fighter and wounded several others in the process of taking the Tanaf border crossing late today.
2016 Mar 4, An Istanbul court ordered into administration the Zaman daily newspaper, sharply critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, adding to growing alarm over freedom of expression in the country.
2016 Mar 4, A Turkish court sentenced two Syrians to four years in jail over the drowning of five people including toddler Aylan Kurdi, the image of whose dead body sparked global sympathy last September over the fate of migrants.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2016 Mar 4, In southeastern Turkey Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb near a police station, killing two police officers and wounding some 35 people.
2016 Mar 4, Turkey's PM Ahmet Davutoglu visited Tehran with six ministers and discussed a high-speed rail link that might bridge Lake Van and triple bilateral trade.
(Econ, 4/2/16, p.51)
2016 Mar 4, In Venezuela 28 miners were reportedly murdered in a dispute over a gold claim. The next day the country's public prosecutor's office said it was opening an investigation as Bolivar State Governor Francisco Rangel denied that any massacre took place. By March 14 seventeen bodies were recovered.
2016 Mar 4, In southern Yemen gunmen stormed a retirement home run by a charity established by Mother Teresa, killing 16 people, including four Catholic nuns in Aden. Indian priest Tom Uzhunnalil (56) was taken captive. In 2017 Uzhunnalil was rescued after 18 months of captivity.
2016 Mar 4, In Zambia Geoffrey Mwamba, vice-president of the opposition United Party for National Development, was arrested on suspicion of proposing violence against President Edgar Lungu.
(Reuters, 3/4/16)
2017 Mar 4, Pres. Donald Trump claimed that Barack Obama had tapped his phones and that it was up to Congress to investigate the matter.
(Econ, 3/11/17, p.27)
2017 Mar 4, It was reported that about 62,000 people, who were held at Colorado's Aurora Detention Facility, have joined together in a lawsuit saying they were required to work for as little as $1 a day.
(SFC, 3/4/17, p.A4)
2017 Mar 4, In New York a man in Schenectady threw gasoline on his wife and set her on fire. Elizabeth Gonzales died the next day. Antonio Bargallo (69) was taken into custody.
(SFC, 3/7/17, p.A6)
2017 Mar 4, US Customs officers arrested Juan Carlos Luperon as he carried 10 pounds of cocaine taped to his legs at NYC's Kennedy Airport following his arrival from the Dominican Republic.
(SSFC, 3/12/17, p.A9)
2017 Mar 4, Bahrain said it has arrested 25 suspected members of a terror group allegedly backed by Iran on the island nation.
2017 Mar 4, China said it will raise its defense budget by about 7 percent this year, continuing a trend of lowered growth amid a slowing economy despite regional tensions over the South China Sea and other issues.
2017 Mar 4, Senior Chinese government adviser Luo Fuhe warned that the country's internet censorship is hampering scientific research and economic development, in a rare public criticism of a sensitive policy that the government has vigorously defended.
2017 Mar 4, Iran said the six-year prison term of Ahmad Montazeri, son of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, has been suspended after approval by the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei following a request by a top cleric.
2017 Mar 4, Jordan hanged 15 death row prisoners including 10 convicted prisoners with ties to Islamic extremism who carried out five shootings and a bombing since 2003. It was the largest round of executions in the kingdom in at least a decade.
2017 Mar 4, East Libyan forces carried out air strikes around major oil ports as they sought to regain control of the area from a rival faction. Strongman Khalifa Haftar conceded the loss of Ras Lanuf's main airfield to forces led by Islamists of the Benghazi Defence Brigades.
(Reuters, 3/4/17)(AFP, 3/4/17)
2017 Mar 4, Malaysia expelled North Korea's ambassador for refusing to apologize for his strong accusations over Malaysia's handling of the investigation into the killing of the North Korean leader's half-brother.
2017 Mar 4, In Pakistan unidentified gunmen killed attorney Mohammed Jan Gigyani in northwestern Shabqadar town. Gigyani was a prominent lawyer affiliated with the secular Qaumi Watan political party. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway faction of Pakistani Taliban militants claimed responsibility for the killing.
2017 Mar 4, Somalia's PM Hassan Ali Khaire announced that 110 people have died from hunger in the past 48 hours in a single region as a severe drought threatens millions of people across the country.
2017 Mar 4, Spanish police arrested 24 members of a Colombian drug ring seeking to establish a network for the wholesale distribution of cocaine.
2017 Mar 4, Syrian government forces supported by Russian air power and artillery seizing eight more northern villages today and around 90 villages since mid-January. Tens of thousands of Syrian civilians have fled the ferocious fighting against Islamic State group jihadists over the past week. At least 11 civilians were killed and dozens more wounded in air strikes on the village of Oqayrabat village, Hama province, that a monitor said were likely carried out by Russia.
2017 Mar 4, A Syrian military jet crashed in Turkey's southern border province of Hatay. The pilot was rescued after a nine hour search and had "a few" broken bones and was receiving treatment at a local hospital, but wasn't in critical condition.
2017 Mar 4, The United Nations announced aid worth $5 million (4.7 million euros) to help people affected by the humanitarian crisis in the violence-wracked Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
2017 Mar 4, The annual report by a UN panel of experts on North Korea said North Korean weapons barred by UN sanctions have ended up in the hands of UN peacekeepers in Africa.
2018 Mar 4, In the northeastern US about one million people remained without power two days after a storm left nine people dead.
(SFC, 3/5/18, p.A12)
2018 Mar 4, The 90th Academy Awards ceremony was held at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. "The Shape of Water" won four awards including best film. Gary Oldman won the best actor Oscar for his role in "Darkest Hour." Frances McDormand won the best actress Oscar for her role in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri."
(SFC, 3/5/18, p.E4)
2018 Mar 4, In San Francisco the Pacific Fertility Clinic suffered a liquid nitrogen failure that damaged a number of frozen eggs and embryos. The exact number of eggs and embryos affected was not disclosed.
(SFC, 3/12/18, p.C1)
2018 Mar 4, Russ Solomon (b.1925), the founder of Tower Records, died at his home in Sacramento, Ca. From 1941 he built the chain to 170 stores, which then folded in 2006 in the wake of the Internet and music streaming.
(SFC, 3/7/18, p.D2)
2018 Mar 4, Bangladeshi police arrested three men as they investigate a knife attack on Zafar Iqbal, a popular author and professor of computer science and engineering. Faizur Rahman had targeted Iqbal as "an enemy of Islam".
(Reuters, 3/4/18)(AFP, 3/4/18)
2018 Mar 4, In England former Russian spy Sergei Skripal (66) and his daughter (33) were in a critical condition after collapsing in unexplained illness in Salisbury. Skripal had been convicted in Russia on charges of spying for Britain and sentenced in 2006 to 13 years in prison. He was freed in 2010 as part of a US-Russian spy swap. Yulia Skripal was discharged from Salisbury district Hospital on April 10 and taken to a secure location. Her father was reported to be recovering more slowly.
(AP, 3/6/18)(SFC, 4/11/18, p.A3)
2018 Mar 4, In Burkina Faso one man was shot dead after three people attempted to storm a roadblock in the early hours near the presidential compound.
2018 Mar 4, Egypt's military said four soldiers and 10 jihadists have been killed in a military operation in Sinai against Islamic State group jihadists.
2018 Mar 4, Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) decisively backed another coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, clearing the way for a new government in Europe's largest economy after months of political uncertainty.
(Reuters, 3/4/18)
2018 Mar 4, Greece's coast guard said it has seized about 1.3 tons of processed cannabis, hidden aboard a foreign flagged fishing vessel intercepted off the southern island of Crete.
(Reuters, 3/4/18)
2018 Mar 4, Guatemala said it will relocate its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem this May, two days after the United States shifts its mission.
2018 Mar 4, An Israeli Arab motorist injured three security personnel in a ramming attack near Acre and was shot and wounded. A bystander opened fore and wounded the driver, who was apprehended.
(Reuters, 3/4/18)(SFC, 3/5/18, p.A2)
2018 Mar 4, Italy held national elections. More than half of the electorate backed populist, eurosceptic parties. Partial election results showed 5-Star emerged as by far the biggest party with about 32 percent of the national vote. The center-left coalition took less than 23% of the vote; the center-right coalition took 37%.
(AP, 3/4/18)(AP, 3/5/18)(Reuters, 3/5/18)(SFC, 3/7/18, p.A2)
2018 Mar 4, Nigeria-born Tony Iwobi became Italy's first black senator in the parliamentary vote. Iwobi arrived in Italy with a visa in 1976, and joined the Northern League 24 years ago.
2018 Mar 4, The archdiocese of Naples said it has sent the Vatican a 1,200-page dossier compiled by a male escort identifying 40 actively gay priests and seminarians in Italy.
2018 Mar 4, A Libyan landlord said he has closed a valve and shut down the giant El Sharara oilfield in protest against pollution near a pipeline crossing his land in the western Zintan area.
(Reuters, 3/4/18)
2018 Mar 4, Thousands of flag-waving protestors in Skopje chanted "We are Macedonians" at a rally to protest a possible change to the name of the former Yugoslav republic to comply with a demand by Greece.
(Reuters, 3/4/18)
2018 Mar 4, In Poland an apartment block collapsed in the western city of Poznan, killing four people and injuring 24 others. Teams of firefighters and rescuers with dogs combed the rubble in search of more victims. The body of a fifth victim was recovered the next day. The deadly collapse was caused by a resident who had killed his wife and then tried to kill himself by opening gas valves that caused an explosion.
2018 Mar 4, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman landed in Cairo at the start of his first foreign tour as heir to the throne.
2018 Mar 4, Slovak President Andrej Kiska called for substantial changes in the country's coalition government or for an early election to resolve the "serious political crisis" the country is facing after the slayings of an investigative reporter and his fiancée.
2018 Mar 4, Thousands of Spaniards joined a rally in Barcelona in response to a call by a grassroots group that uses humor to mock Catalonia's separatist push.
2018 Mar 4, Swiss voters handily rejected a proposal brought by free-market advocates to end mandatory fees to finance publicly supported TV and radio programming.
2018 Mar 4, Syria's Central Military Media said government forces have captured at least six villages and towns along the edge of eastern Ghouta in the advance that began a day earlier. Rebel factions launched a counteroffensive, sending fighters behind government lines in a series of attacks.
2019 Mar 4, The Trump administration said Washington will scrap the preferential trade status of India and Turkey, as President Donald Trump ramped up his battle against what his administration views as unfair foreign trade practices.
2019 Mar 4, The US House Judiciary Committee said it is launching a sweeping new probe of Pres. Donald Trump, his White House, his campaign and his businesses. The panel sent document requests to 81 people linked to the president and his associates.
2019 Mar 4, American and Israeli militaries announced that the US has temporarily deployed its highly advanced THAAD missile defence system in Israel for the first time, reflecting their shared concerns about Iran's development of powerful missiles.
2019 Mar 4, Juan Vallejo Corona (85), California's most prolific serial killer, died at a hospital while serving 25 life sentences for the murder of 25 farm workers. Their bodies were found near Yuba City in 1971.
(SFC, 3/5/19, p.A1)
2019 Mar 4, American actor Luke Perry (52) died in Los Angeles following a massive stroke last week. He had played the wealthy rebel Dylan McKay on "Beverly Hills, 90210" (1990-2000).
(SFC, 3/5/19, p.A10)
2019 Mar 4, Algerians dismissed President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's promise to quit early if re-elected for a fifth time and said they were ready for new protests seeking his resignation.
2019 Mar 4, Belarus lifted a restriction on the number of US diplomats allowed on its territory that had been in force since 2008, a move aimed at improving ties with Washington. Minsk had reduced the number of US diplomats to five from the previous 35 after the United States imposed sanction against Belarusian authorities.
(Reuters, 3/4/19)
2019 Mar 4, British authorities said two teenagers were killed in knife attacks in over the weekend, bringing the number of people killed in stabbings this year to at least 24.
(Reuters, 3/4/19)
2019 Mar 4, Britain and Spain said they have reached an agreement that sets out stricter rules for companies and citizens operating from Gibraltar, a British overseas territory which Spain considers a colony.
2019 Mar 4, In London Laureline Garcia-Bertaux (34), originally from France, was reported missing after not turning up for work. Her body was found in a garden in Kew on the evening of March 6. A post-mortem found she had been strangled. A week later suspect Kirill Belorusov (32) was detained in the Estonian capital Tallinn on a European arrest warrant.
2019 Mar 4, Keith Flint (49), the fiery frontman of British dance-electronic band The Prodigy, was found dead at his home near London. Keith reportedly took his own life over the weekend. The band's 1990s "Firestarter" (1996) and "Breathe" (1996) were an incendiary fusion of techno, breakbeat and acid house music.
2019 Mar 4, The Central African Republic's peace agreement was under strain after two militia groups abandoned the deal and a third said it was quitting a new government designed to be the keystone of the accord.
2019 Mar 4, China accused detained Canadian citizen Michael Kovrig of stealing state secrets which were passed on to him from another detained Canadian, Michael Spavor, in what is likely to increase tension between Ottawa and Beijing.
(Reuters, 3/4/19)
2019 Mar 4, Egyptian photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zaid was released after five years in prison and returned home to hugs from family and friends, pledging to continue working despite severe restrictions imposed on his movements, including having to spend the nights at a police station nearby.
2019 Mar 4, Indonesia and Australia signed a free trade agreement in Jakarta that will eliminate many tariffs, allow Australian-owned hospitals to operate in the giant Southeast Asian country and increase work visas for young Indonesians.
2019 Mar 4, In Indonesia a court ruled that construction of a Chinese-backed dam, that will cut through the habitat of a the most critically endangered orangutan species, can continue.
(SFC, 3/5/19, p.A2)
2019 Mar 4, Israeli security forces shot and killed two Palestinians who carried out a car-ramming attack in the occupied West Bank that injured a soldier and a policeman.
2019 Mar 4, Israeli attack helicopters struck Hamas military positions in Gaza, after the country's army reported a balloon-borne "explosive device" from the Palestinian enclave targeted its territory.
2019 Mar 4, Lithuanian PM Saulius Skvernelis said he will ask Belarus to convert its Russian-built nuclear power plant to gas provided by Lithuania's liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal and a planned gas link between Lithuania and Poland.
(Reuters, 3/4/19)
2019 Mar 4, Mexican archaeologists reported the discovery of a cave filled with hundreds of artifacts beneath the ruins of the Mayan city of Chichen Itza, a stunning city of stone in the Yucatan peninsula that was founded sometime around 750 AD. Locals had actually discovered the cave more than 50 years ago.
2019 Mar 4, In Mexico the townspeople of Santa Rosa de Lima, Guanajuato state, tried to block a police raid on a fuel-theft gang. The gang had allegedly paid for the local support. The municipal force did nothing to help in the raid that freed six kidnap victims.
(SFC, 3/6/19, p.A2)
2019 Mar 4, A key train service with neighboring India resumed and schools in Pakistani Kashmir opened in another sign of easing tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals since a major escalation last week over the disputed Kashmir region.
2019 Mar 4, President Vladimir Putin officially suspended Russia's participation in a key Cold War-era arms treaty, after the US first moved to ditch the INF deal.
2019 Mar 4, In South Sudan the leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea met with President Salva Kiir seeking to breathe new life into a flagging peace agreement signed six months ago between his government and rebels.
2019 Mar 4, In Switzerland the electric Jaguar I-Pace won the Car of the Year award in Europe ahead of the 89th Geneva International Motor Show, at the Palexpo in Geneva. This was first time the storied British brand has been bestowed the prize.
2019 Mar 4, In eastern Syria hundreds of people including fighters from the Islamic State group evacuated their last foothold hours after US-backed Syrian fighters said they were forced to slow their advance because the extremists are using civilians as human shields. Some 500 people, including fighters, surrendered and evacuated the village of Baghouz and its surrounding areas.
2019 Mar 4, Uganda's government said Rwanda has started to allow trucks carrying goods from Uganda to enter at one of the main crossing points on their shared border, a sign that renewed hostilities have started to ease. Their hostilities were fueled by longstanding mutual suspicions and allegations of supporting each other's dissidents.
(Reuters, 3/4/19)
2019 Mar 4, Flag-waving Venezuelans turned out to await the return of opposition leader Juan Guaido, who was defying the threat of arrest as he embarks on a renewed push against embattled President Nicolas Maduro.
2019 Mar 4, Zambia's broadcasting regulator ordered a one-month suspension of a TV channel that has been critical of the government, just days after the governing party accused the station of bias and unprofessionalism. Prime TV has openly condemned the government of President Edgar Lungu.
2020 Mar 4, The US conducted its first airstrike against Taliban forces in Afghanistan since signing an ambitious peace deal with the militant group. The attack was to counter a Taliban assault on Afghan government forces in Nahr-e Saraj in the southern Helmand province.
2020 Mar 4, US federal health officials announced new testing criteria for coronavirus, requiring only a doctor's agreement. But it's unclear whether there are enough tests for everybody who'll want one.
(NY Times, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, The US Food and Drug Administration banned electrical stimulation devices (ESDs) used in curbing self-injurious or aggressive behavior, citing substantial risks of illness or injury to patients.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency over the COVID-19 virus, opening the way for federal aid, after the death of a man in Placer County, near Sacramento, who had been on an earlier sailing of the ship in February. This was the nation's first coronavirus death outside of Washington state and brought the US death toll to 11. California now had 53 confirmed cases.
(AP, 3/5/20)(Good Morning America, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, Anthony Levandowski, a former Google and Uber engineer, filed for bankruptcy in San Francisco following a court order for him to pay $179 million to Google over a contract dispute. Levandowski had left Google to form Otto a self-driging truck startup and then sold Otto to Uber for $600 million.
(SFC, 3/6/20, p.D1)
2020 Mar 4, In Florida veteran airline mechanic Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani (60) was sentenced to three years in prison for sabotaging an American Airlines jetliner with 150 people aboard in a bid to earn overtime fixing the plane.
2020 Mar 4, A US federal judge invalidated Michigan's Medicaid work requirements.
(SFC, 3/5/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 4, New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the four new cases of coronavirus, bringing the state's total number of confirmed cases to six, were all linked to a Westchester County-based lawyer.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Billionaire Mike Bloomberg ended his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden.
2020 Mar 4, Tennessee reported its first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus.
(Good Morning America, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, Texas confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus man in a man who recently traveled abroad.
2020 Mar 4, In Britain the number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 87 in the biggest daily jump since it was first detected in the country.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.53)
2020 Mar 4, China reported 139 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of cases to 80,409. The death toll reached 2,981.
(Business Insider, 3/4/20)(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, China said it has approved the use of Swiss drugmaker Roche's anti-inflammation drug Actemra for patients who develop severe complications from the coronavirus as it urgently hunts for new ways to combat the deadly infection that is spreading worldwide.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Egypt executed Hisham el-Ashmawi, one of its most high-profile militant leaders, after his conviction for his role in planning scores of deadly attacks against the country's security forces. El-Ashmawi had been convicted in 14 crimes including a 2014 ambush that killed 22 Egyptian military border guards near the border with Libya, and the 2013 assassination attempt against the interior minister at the time, Mohammed Ibrahim.
2020 Mar 4, The European Commission unveiled plans for its first climate law, which will act as the basis for the EU's aim to make the 27-country bloc climate neutral by 2050.
(SFC, 3/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 4, Germany ordered the closure of all schools and universities until March 15.
(Econ., 3/7/20, p.48)
2020 Mar 4, Germany-based Lufthansa said it has cut its flight capacity in a move equivalent to grounding almost a fifth of its fleet, response to the coronavirus epidemic.
2020 Mar 4, India lifted some restrictions on internet access in Kashmir, including allowing access to social media websites for the first time since the restive Himalayan region was locked down and its autonomy revoked in August.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Iran reported 15 new deaths from COVID-19 and 586 additional cases, bringing the overall toll to 92 dead and 2,922 infected.. President Hassan Rouhani dismissed a US offer to help the Islamic republic fight its coronavirus outbreak, charging that "vicious" American sanctions are depriving the country of medicine. Iran canceled Friday prayers in major cities.
2020 Mar 4, Amnesty International accused the Iranian security forces of killing 23 children, mostly with live ammunition, during a November crackdown on anti-government protests.
2020 Mar 4, Iraq said a Muslim cleric (70) died today from the novel coronavirus, the first death from the outbreak in a country where 31 people have been infected. Health authorities announced the country's first two deaths from the new coronavirus, one in the capital Baghdad and the other in the autonomous Kurdish region.
2020 Mar 4, Israel ordered travelers arriving from Germany, France, Spain, Austria and Switzerland to go into home quarantine over coronavirus concerns. The Health Ministry also ordered all international conferences in Israel cancelled and banned gatherings of more than 5,000 participants.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, The death toll in Italy soared to 79, with more than 2,500 people infected. A government source said Italy is to close all schools and universities starting March 5 to try to contain its worsening coronavirus outbreak.
(AFP, 3/4/20)(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Fiat Chrysler defied fears over Italy's coronavirus outbreak to showcase an electric version of its 500 city car, as it strives to catch up with rivals in low-emissions driving while heading into a merger with Peugeot maker PSA.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Japan's government opened part of Futaba, the last town that had been off limits due to radiation since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
(SFC, 3/5/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 4, Lebanon has 15 cases confirmed of coronavirus since Feb. 21 after infected travelers arrived from Iran. The outbreak was expected to grow, challenging hard-hit medical facilities.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, In Libya the only civilian airport in Tripoli came under direct attack late today by eastern-based opposition forces. There were no reports of causalities.
2020 Mar 4, North Korea's Kim Jong Un sent South Korean President Moon Jae-in a letter expressing condolences over the coronavirus outbreak. This was the North Korean leader's first public overture to his counterpart in more than four months.
(Bloomberg, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, It was reported that Palestinians have launched protests in the occupied West Bank after Israeli bulldozers began clearing land in what villagers fear is an attempt to confiscate it for future Jewish settlements.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, The Philippines said it is resuming aid talks with Western countries it had rebuked just months earlier for backing a UN resolution to review human rights abuses under President Rodrigo Duterte's rule.
2020 Mar 4, Saudi Arabia banned its citizens and other residents of the kingdom from performing the pilgrimage in Mecca due to the coronavirus. Saudi Arabia said its second coronavirus case for a Saudi national came from Iran through Bahrain.
(AP, 3/4/20)(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, South Korea reported 516 new coronavirus cases. It now had had more than 5,600 cases and 32 deaths.
(Business Insider, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, In Sweden 16 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Stockholm, taking the total number of cases in Sweden to 52.
2020 Mar 4, In northwestern Syria two more Turkish soldiers were killed in a Syrian government attack, as steady clashes between the two national armies continued to rack up casualties. Nine Syrian soldiers were also reported killed in Turkish drone attacks in the area.
2020 Mar 4, In Turkey a fistfight erupted in parliament during a speech by opposition lawmaker Engin Ozkoc, who earlier accused President Tayyip Erdogan of disrespecting Turkish soldiers who died in Syria.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, A man (43) was shot dead as he tried to cross from Turkey into Greece. Five others were treated for gunshot wounds. Greece dismissed reports of the shooting as "fake news".
(Reuters, 4/3/20)
2020 Mar 4, A Ugandan court sent independent filmmaker Moses Bwayo to jail after he was accused of singing subversive songs while producing a documentary about a pop star seeking to unseat the long-serving president.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
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