October 2007

October 2007 is the tenth month of that year. It began on a Monday and 31 days later, ended on a Wednesday.

International holidays

October 2 - Gandhi Jayanti (India)
October 3 - Last 3rd of Ramadan which includes Laylat al-Qadr (Islamic)
October 3 - end of Sukkot, sunset (Judaism)
October 5 - Proclamation of Republic (Portugal)
October 8 - Thanksgiving (Canada)
October 8 - Health and Sports Day (Japan)
October 8 - Columbus Day (United States)
October 16 - World Food Day
October 13 - Eid ul-Fitr (Islam)
October 21 - Apple Day

October 24 - United Nations Day
October 25 - Thanksgiving Day (Grenada; commemorates Invasion of Grenada, 1983)
October 31 - Halloween
Independence Day
- October 1 - (Nigeria and Cyprus)
- October 4 - (Lesotho)
- October 8 - (Croatia)
- October 24 - (Zambia)
- October 27 - (Azerbaijan, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Turkmenistan, Czech Republic, and Slovakia)

Portal:Current events

October 1, 2007 (Monday)

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Pope Benedict XVI replaced Archbishop Piero Marini, the longtime director of office of papal liturgies, with Father Guido Marini of the Genoa archdiocese. (Novus Motus Liturgicus)
President of Russia Vladimir Putin announces he will run on centrist list in the parliamentary elections in December and that he does not exclude the option of becoming Prime Minister of Russia after the election. [1]
Ukrainian parliamentary election, 2007: With 70 percent counted, Timoshenko's bloc and Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party had 48 percent of the vote. Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's party and his Communist and Socialist allies had 36.8 percent. (Bloomberg)
At least 15 people are killed and 19 others injured in a suspected suicide bomb blast in Bannu in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. (BBC)

October 2, 2007 (Tuesday)

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2007 Summer Special Olympics opens in Shanghai, China. (Wall Street Journal)
Citigroup buys out minority shareholders of Japanese brokerage Nikko Cordial for $4.6 billion. (Reuters via CNBC)
Five workers are trapped underground in an Xcel Energy hydroelectric plant near Georgetown, Colorado, United States due to a chemical fire. They are later found dead. (Reuters) (Fox News)
At least 27 people are killed when a bus catches fire in Chongqing, southwest China. (News Limited)
Pakistan:
- The Pakistani cabinet announces plans to drop all corruption charges against former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.^{citation needed}
- The President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf appoints General Ashfaq Kiyani to succeed him as the head of the Pakistan Army after Saturday's election. (Washington Post)
Israel confirms it conducted an airstrike on Syria on September 6. (Ynet)
War in Iraq: The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown makes his first visit to Iraq, where he announces the withdrawal of 1,000 troops. (BBC) (AP via Topix)
War in Afghanistan: A suicide bomber blows himself up near a bus carrying policemen killing at least 11 in Kabul. (BBC)
The President of South Korea Roh Moo-hyun walks across the Korean Demilitarized Zone in travelling to Pyongyang for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. (BBC) (CNN)
2007 Burmese anti-government protests:
- United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari meets with Burmese General Than Shwe to tell him to stop the killing of dissidents. (The Guardian)
- Gambari later meets with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi with growing fear about the wellbeing of approximately 1000 dissidents held in a warehouse in the Government Technical Institute in Rangoon. (AFP, Reuters via The Melbourne Age)

October 3, 2007 (Wednesday)

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More than 3,000 gold miners are trapped underground in the Elandskraal mine at Elandsrand, northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, owned by Harmony Gold Mining. (BBC)
The United States and Russia sign a pact to use Russian technology on NASA missions to hunt for water on the moon and Mars. (Reuters)
United States President George W. Bush vetoes an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. (AP via Google News)
Edward Pietrzyk, the Polish ambassador to Iraq, is hurt and his bodyguard is killed by a bomb attack in Baghdad. (Bloomberg)
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto says that the corruption charges against her have not been dropped, and that Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad's announcement is part of a disinformation campaign. (CNN) (NYT)
Lal Masjid mosque opens to the public three months after being seized by the Pakistani army.^{citation needed}
2007 Burmese anti-government protests:
- The State Peace and Development Council releases 80 Buddhist monks and 149 Buddhist nuns. (Reuters via News Limited)
- United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari leaves the country, while arrests and intimidation of demonstrators continue. (NYT) (Guardian) (BBC)
2007 Pacific typhoon season: Vietnam evacuates 400,000 people from the provinces of Nghe An and Ha Tinh ahead of Severe Tropical Storm Lekima (Hanna). Two people die and hundreds of houses collapse when the storm strikes.(AP), (AP via CNN)
North Korea:
- The President of South Korea Roh Moo-hyun and the leader of North Korea Kim Jong-Il commence talks in Pyongyang. (Reuters)
- Kim Jong-Il proposes to extend the talks by one day, but Roh Moo-hyun declines. (CNN)
- At the six-party talks in Beijing, North Korea agrees to fully shut down its nuclear program by the end of the year. (NYT)

October 4, 2007 (Thursday)

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United States Republican Party Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico announces that he will retire at the end of his current term due to a degenerative brain disease. (AP via Google News)
The Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper chooses Mark Carney to succeed David Dodge as governor of the Bank of Canada. (Bloomberg)
The recording industry wins a key victory with a court in the U.S. state of Minnesota finding that a woman was liable for damages of $220,000 for sharing copyrighted music online through Kazaa. (USA Today)
Family members of deceased de facto president of Chile Augusto Pinochet are arrested in Santiago on charges of embezzlement. (BBC)
Republican Party Senator Larry Craig from Idaho vows to serve out his term in the United States Senate despite losing a court bid to rescind a guilty plea for an indecent act in a Minneapolis Airport men's room. (AP via the Guardian)
India asks neighboring Myanmar to free Aung San Suu Kyi. (Times of India)
Bangladesh Supreme Court denies bail to former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia in a corruption and extortion case against her.^{citation needed}
An Africa One Antonov An-26 cargo plane crashes into a residential area in Kinshasa, DR Congo. (Sky News)
North Korea and South Korea agree to seek talks with the People's Republic of China and the United States to reach a permanent peace agreement to formally end the Korean War. (Reuters)
Malcolm Turnbull, the Australian Federal Environment Minister, approves the Gunns Tamar Valley Pulp Mill but with an extensive list of conditions. (News Limited)
A rescue operation begins for 3,200 gold miners trapped in Elandsrand, South Africa. All of the miners are eventually rescued leading to wild celebrations. (AFP via News Limited) (SABC News) (Reuters via ABC News Australia)
A court case to challenge the overthrow of Laisenia Qarase's government of Fiji opens in Suva. (Radio New Zealand)
Russia celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, which marked the start of the Space Race. (BBC)

October 5, 2007 (Friday)

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Two bomb blasts in Kidapawan City, on Mindanao in the Philippines, the explosion killed a child and injured 36 people. (Radio Australia)
Topps Meat Company announces that it is going out of business as a result of recalling 21.7 million pounds of beef in the United States linked to 30 cases of E. coli-related illness. (Reuters)
Canada stops the sale of Novartis anti-inflammatory drug Prexige and cancels its authorisation due to the risk of liver-related effects such as hepatitis. (Reuters via Wall Street Journal)
2007 Burmese anti-government protests:
- Burmese security forces claim that they are looking for four of the monks that led the protests. (AP via CNN)
- United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari briefs the Security Council on the situation in an open session. (CNN)
War in Iraq: United States forces kill at least 25 members of a Shiite militia in a firefight. (AP via Topix)
Marion Jones admits using banned substances during her athletic career and risks being stripped of her five Olympic medals. (AFP via ABC News Online)
Saudi Arabia announces that it will overhaul its judicial system including the creation of a supreme court, an appeals court and new general courts to replace the Supreme Judicial Council. (BBC)
Elections for a Nepalese Constituent Assembly are delayed as the Seven Party Alliance of ruling parties and the former Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) rebels fail to break a deadlock over the republic issue and the voting system to be used. (BBC)
SELENE, Japan's lunar probe, successfully achieves an orbit around the moon. (AP via NYT)

October 6, 2007 (Saturday)

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A collision between a train and a bus kills at least 28 people and injures over 70 in Cuba's eastern Granma province. (CNN via AP)
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown rules out calling an early election. (AP via CNN)
Danish police arrest more than 400 people in protests in Copenhagen over the closure of the Ungdomshuset youth centre earlier in the year. (BBC)
2007 Pacific typhoon season:
- Typhoon Krosa hits Taiwan, killing at least four people and injuring 40 more. (BBC) (Bangkok Post)
- Typhoon Krosa later heads for the People's Republic of China, where 730,000 people are evacuated from Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. (VOA)
War in Afghanistan: A suicide bomb attack on a United States convoy in Kabul kills a U.S. soldier and five civilians. (Reuters) (BBC)
Pervez Musharraf wins the Pakistani Presidential Election in unofficial results. The announcement of the official result will be withheld until a Supreme Court verdict is made on the legality of his candidacy. (BBC)
Adventurer Jason Lewis of Expedition 360 completes the first human-powered circumnavigation of the globe. (BBC)
Quentin L. Cook is called as an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 177th Semi-Annual General Conference. (Deseret News)
Christopher John Worden, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable from Hay River, Northwest Territories, is shot and killed by an unknown assailant. (CBC News)(CTV News)

October 7, 2007 (Sunday)

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War in Afghanistan: Sixteen militants fighting under wanted Uzbek warlord Tahir Yuldash are killed in eastern Afghanistan. (AP via Google)
The United Auto Workers sets a Wednesday deadline to reach a new four-year contract with Chrysler. (NYT)
A sheriff's deputy shoots dead six young people in Crandon, Wisconsin, United States. It was initially believed that he was killed by a police sniper after a manhunt, but is now believed to have committed suicide by multiple gunshots. (Reuters)
Costa Ricans approve CAFTA in a referendum with 52% of the votes. (AP via Google News)
Pro-Taliban militants capture 28 Pakistan soldiers in the North Waziristan tribal region.^{citation needed}
2007 Pacific typhoon season:
- Typhoon Krosa moves towards China's southern Zhejiang and northern Fujian provinces. (AP via CNN)
- The death toll from Severe Tropical Storm Lekima (Hanna) rises to 55. (AP via CNN)
A Syrian military plane crashes near Damascus, killing all three on board. (AP via Google News)
Record-setting temperatures cause the 2007 Chicago Marathon to shut down after only three and a half hours and after the race has a men's open division photo finish, a death, and sprint finishes in the women's open and men's wheelchair divisions. (Chicago Tribune)
Vandals punch a 10-cm (4") tear in the Claude Monet painting Le Pont d'Argenteuil at the Orsay Museum during Paris's annual Nuit Blanche all-night cultural festival. (AP via Yahoo! News
Randy Orton is awarded the vacant WWE championship which he loses in 10 minutes to Triple H, who defeats Umaga in the second title defense of the night, but loses in the 3rd to Randy Orton in a last man standing match.
U.S. college football: On the heels of last week's historic AP Poll shakeup, another one of comparable size occurs, in which four Top Ten teams and eleven ranked teams overall move down the list or off the poll entirely. LSU receives first place from all 65 sports critics, the first time that has occurred for any team since December 2006. #2 California earns its highest rank since 1951, #4 Boston College earns its highest showing since 1984, and #5 South Florida continues its ascent after first moving into the AP Poll three weeks ago. (AP via Yahoo! Sports)

October 8, 2007 (Monday)

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U.S. athlete Marion Jones returns the five medals she won at the Sydney Olympics and accepts a two-year ban from the sport after admitting to her use of a prohibited substance. (Sydney Morning Herald)
Australia suffers its first combat casualty in Afghanistan following the explosion of a bomb in the southern province of Orūzgān. (Canadian Press)
Washington plane crash
- Air crews conduct search and rescue missions for an airplane carrying 8-10 passengers that is believed to have crashed in a mountainous area of the U.S. state of Washington 45 miles west of Yakima. (Reuters)
- The wreckage of a small plane carrying nine skydivers and the pilot is found in Washington with no sign of survivors. (AP via Google)
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown announces that Britain will cut its troop commitment in Iraq by half to 2,500 troops. (AFP via ABC News Australia)
H D Kumaraswamy resigns as Chief Minister of the Indian state of Karnataka. Governor Rameshwar Thakur is likely to recommend presidential rule till further elections.^{citation needed}
Mario R. Capecchi, Oliver Smithies, and Sir Martin J. Evans are announced as winners of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of the principles for introducing specific gene modifications by the use of embryonic stem cells in mice. (Nobelprize.org)
Pakistan:
- A helicopter escorting the helicopter of President Pervez Musharraf crashes in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, killing four security officials and injuring his spokesman.^{citation needed}
- Forty five Pakistani soldiers and 130 pro-Taliban militants have died in two days of fierce fighting in North Waziristan, the Pakistani army says. (Aljazeera)
2007 Burmese anti-government protests: Burma's junta announces that Buddhist monasteries have accepted US$8000 as well as food and medicine from its soldiers to signify the armed forces have not left the faith. (AFP via Melbourne Herald-Sun)
New Zealand introduces its biofuel bill. (NZ parliament)

October 9, 2007 (Tuesday)

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The British Government drops plans to ban the mixing of sperm and eggs from different species. (The Guardian)
Christian Von Wernich, a Roman Catholic priest and former police chaplain is sentenced to a life sentence for his role in torture, kidnapping and murder during Argentina's dirty war. (Reuters via News Limited)
The United States Supreme Court dismisses the case of the German citizen Khalid El-Masri who accuses the CIA of abducting him to a secret prison in Afghanistan where he claims he was tortured. The US government had argued that a public trial would reveal state secrets. (Deutsche Welle)(LA Times)
Pakistan - Battle of Mir Ali:
- 20 people are injured in Peshawar, Pakistan, when a bomb rips through a music shop.^{citation needed}
- At least sixty people are killed as Pakistani aircraft bomb a bazaar in Epi village in North Waziristan. (CNN)
War in Iraq:
- Employees of Australian-owned security firm Unity Resources Group open fire on a car in Baghdad killing two Iraqi women.(CNN)
- Twin blasts in the town of Baiji kill at least eight people and injures dozens more. (BBC)
Japan extends sanctions against North Korea, citing a lack of progress in a dispute about the abduction of Japanese nationals. (BBC)
The President of France Nicolas Sarkozy travels to Moscow to meet with the President of Russia Vladimir Putin to discuss a broad range of policies including Kosovo, Chechnya, and Iran. (AFP via Google)
Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg are announced as winners of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance. (Nobelprize.org) (USA Today)
The general election in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador gives the Conservative government of Premier Danny Williams an enlarged majority at the expense of the Liberals. (CBC)

- The Dow Jones industrial average reaches its highest point in history, considerably above 14000 points before falling into bear market territory during 2008

October 10, 2007 (Wednesday)

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Polish police evict about 65 rebellious ex-nuns who had illegally occupied a convent in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland, for more than two years in defiance of a Vatican order. (AP)
The general election in the Canadian province of Ontario gives the Liberal government of Premier Dalton McGuinty an enlarged majority. (Bloomberg)
Tibetan exiles storm the embassy of the People's Republic of China in New Delhi to protest the lack of religious freedom in China. (AP via CNN)
Taliban frees one German and four Afghan hostages kidnapped in mid-July.^{citation needed}
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns consumers not to eat Banquet pot pies or other pot pies made by ConAgra with a printed code ending in C9 due to possible links with a salmonella outbreak. (AP via WJBF)
Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, spells out his conditions for a peace deal with Israel prior to a conference in Annapolis, Maryland next month. (The Guardian)
The United Automobile Workers reaches a tentative agreement with Chrysler shortly after workers commence strike action. (Fox News)
The first Malaysian astronaut, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, and the first female space station commander, Peggy Whitson, are launched towards the International Space Station on board Soyuz TMA-11. (Spaceflightnow)
German scientist Gerhard Ertl is announced as the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on chemical processes on solid surfaces. (BBC)
The International Monetary Fund warns of a slowdown of the global economy in 2008 as a result of financial turmoil on global markets. (BBC)
An earthquake measuring 4.8 on the Richter scale is recorded just south of Katanning, Western Australia, and felt as far away as Perth, Western Australia. (ABC)
A 14-year-old high school student goes on a shooting rampage in Cleveland, Ohio, wounding two teachers and two students before his death. (CNN)
Sonic the Hedgehog was officially announced to be in the best-selling video game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

October 11, 2007 (Thursday)

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The Prime Minister of Australia John Howard proposes a constitutional referendum recognising indigenous Australians in the Australian constitution, if he is reelected. (BBC)
Mychal Bell of the Jena 6 is ordered to spend 18 months in a juvenile facility for violating probation for previous convictions. (CNN)
An AMC Airlines MD-83 makes an emergency belly landing at the Atatürk International Airport, overshooting the runway. There is one injury, and the plane is badly damaged. (Reuters)
A group of 138 prominent Muslim clerics and scholars send an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders, calling for greater understanding between the two faiths. (BBC)
Turkey recalls its ambassador to the United States due to anger over an upcoming House of Representatives vote on recognizing the Armenian Genocide. (CNN)
The British writer Doris Lessing wins the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. (The Nobel Foundation)

October 12, 2007 (Friday)

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The Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper appoints a five-member advisory committee on Afghanistan to be chaired by John Manley of the opposition Liberal Party of Canada. (ABC News Australia)
The President of Russia Vladimir Putin threatens to renounce the Cold War-era INF Treaty while calling on the United States to abandon a proposed European missile shield in talks with the United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defence Robert Gates. (AFP)
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. (Washington Post)
Indonesia and Australia commemorate the fifth anniversary of the 2002 Bali bombings. (ABC News Australia) (BBC)
Three people are dead at the Newhall Pass interchange on Interstate 5 just north of Los Angeles, California after thirty-one vehicles collide in a highway tunnel, closing the freeway entirely. (CNN)

October 13, 2007 (Saturday)

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At least nine people die and 8 people go missing as a result of torrential rain in and around Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. (AFP)
At least 20 people die following a landslide at an open pit gold mine near Suarez in Colombia's Tolima department. (Reuters)
At least 11 people are dead and 23 more injured after a natural gas explosion in an apartment building in Dnipropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine. (AFP via ABC News Australia)
Four people are killed and over 50 injured when rear carriages of Probhati Express derails near Dhaka, Bangladesh.^{citation needed}
Tens of thousands of people participate in a pro-government rally in Rangoon as Ibrahim Gambari, the United Nations envoy, returns to Southeast Asia. (AFP via ABC)
Flooding after several days of torrential rain kills at least 23 people in Haiti with the town of Cabaret being worst affected. (BBC)

October 14, 2007 (Sunday)

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A bomb explodes in a movie theatre in Ludhiana in India's Punjab state killing at least six people and wounding at least 30 others. (AP via CNN)
Three million Italians go to the polls to elect the leader of the new Democratic Party. The current Mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, wins with about 75% of the votes. (AFP via Google News)
The Attorney-General of Israel launches a third criminal inquiry into the behaviour of the Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert before he was Prime Minister: the latest inquiry is into granting political favours as Trade Minister. (BBC)
Burma restores some Internet access but continues to deny access to foreign news services such as the BBC and CNN, blogs and dissident sites. (AP via Google News)
The Interfax news agency reports that Russian security forces have received a warning of plans to assassinate the President of Russia Vladimir Putin in Iran.(Reuters)
At least eight people including six tourists die when trapped by a flood in the Nam Talu cave in Khao Sok national park in southern Thailand. (Reuters)
Voters in Togo go to the poll for the Togolese parliamentary election, 2007. (BBC)
The Prime Minister of Australia John Howard asks the Governor-General of Australia Michael Jeffery to dissolve the Parliament of Australia and call an election on 24 November. (ABC News Australia) (ABC News Australia)
After 25 centuries, the marbles of the Acropolis of Athens are cautiously moved to the New Acropolis Museum. (BBC)

October 15, 2007 (Monday)

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Montenegrin Prime Minister Željko Šturanović signs a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the European Union, saying that Montenegro is hoping to lodge an official application for EU membership in the first half of 2008. (EUobserver)
Battle of Las Anod: Troops from the breakaway Somali republic of Somaliland seize a town inside Puntland, a rival region loyal to the interim Somali government, killing at least 10 people. (Al Jazeera)
Sir Menzies Campbell resigns as the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the