The three-week old political crisis in India, following the fall of Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda’s government, is likely to continue even though his ruling United Front coalition claimed that it had ‘unanimously’ selected 78-year-old External Affairs Minister, Inder Kumar Gujral, as the new party leader who will now replace Gowda as prime minister. The cracks within the 13-party coalition became apparent minutes after both Gowda himself and the UF convener and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu, told journalists in New Delhi that “we are happy and proud to have selected Gujral as the new leader unanimously”. Gujral, a 77-year-old scholar, said “I am thankful to all the political parties who have stood behind me in the UF and also to the Congress for extending its support”. Gujral added, “I bow my head in all humility to the people of India and will to the best of my ability give them a clean government, a government which serves them and attends to all their basic problems — these being poverty, backwardness and the denial of social justice”.
Other important events:
1839 The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom.
1897 The first Boston Marathon is run from Ashland, Massachusetts, to Boston.
1903 An earthquake hits Turkey, killing 1,700 people.
1928 Japan occupies Shantung in China.
1933 The United States goes off the gold standard.
1951 The first Miss World beauty contest is held in London.
1956 Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco.
1960 South Korea’s founding president Syngman Rhee is toppled.
1964 Coalition government in Laos is deposed by right-wing military group.
1975 India’s first satellite Aryabhata is launched.
1977 Police in South Korea carry out nationwide roundup of dissidents.
1982 Astronauts Sally Ride and Guion Bluford Jr. becomes the first woman and African-American selected for the Nasa programme.
1987 Central Airbase, a new multi-million dollar airbase, is inaugurated in Dubai.
1988 UAE flag tanker, the FAL V, is attacked by Iranian gunboats in the Strait of Hormuz.
1989 A gun turret explodes aboard the USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.
1995 A huge car bomb tears apart a government building in Oklahoma City, killing at least 167.
1997 Sheng Da, the first ship to sail directly to Taiwan from rival China in 48 years, steams into Kaohsiung port.
1998 The leaders of 34 countries in the western hemisphere, gathered at the Summit of the Americas in Chile, agree to take steps to create the world’s largest free trade zone.
1999 German parliament gathers for first time in renovated Reichstag.
2000 An Air Philippines plane crashes in the southern Philippines, killing all 131 people aboard.
2004 Spanish troops start to withdraw from Iraq
2005 German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is chosen as new Pope to succeed John Paul II.
2012 India successfully test-fires a nuclear-capable missile with a range of more than 5,000km and joins the select club of nations with long-range missiles.
2013 A 6.6 magnitude earthquake kills 203 people in Sichuan province in China.
2014 Bernard Hopkins becomes the oldest fighter to unify world titles at age 49, after beating Beibut Shumenov in a light-heavyweight.
2015 Up to 700 people drown after an overcrowded boat smuggling them to Europe capsizes off Libya.
