Spymaster Wolf is caged
1991 - Former East German spymaster Markus Wolf, one of the world’s most successful espionage chiefs, came in from the cold, giving himself up to Bonn’s police after a year on the run. Wolf, arrested as he arrived from Austria at a small border village in the Bavarian Alps, was whisked off to Karlsruhe to face charges of running Communist spies against West Germany for three decades. But, in a twist worthy of a spy thriller, Bonn is not sure if it can jail the man whose agents were so successful that one of them forced the resignation of former West German chancellor Willy Brandt. “He will be brought before an investigative judge with a request that he be kept in custody,” Justice Minister Klaus Kinkel said.
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1903 - Alfred Deakin succeeds Edmund Baston as Australia premier.
1943 - Soviet army crosses Dnieper River north of Kiev as Germans retreat in the Second World War.
1946 - Cathay Pacific Airways is founded in Hong Kong.
1957 - Camp Nou, the largest stadium in Europe, is opened in Barcelona.
1960 - The USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched.
1981 - A four-man Armenian ‘suicide squad’ shoots its way into the Turkish consulate in France, killing a security guard.
1982 - The US government lifts the military sanctions that it had imposed on Argentina during the war with Britain over the Falkland Islands.
1987 - Armed forces seize control of Transkei, one of South Africa’s black homelands, ousting the prime minister.
1989 - Austria’s Gerhard Berger storms to victory in an action-packed Portuguese Grand Prix.
1991 - Lebanese kidnappers free Jack Mann in Beirut after 865 days in captivity.
1993 - A Philippines court sentences Imelda Marcos, former first lady, to 24 years in jail for corruption charges.
1995 - Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel sign a pact, expanding Palestinian rule in the West Bank.
1996 - US and other major nuclear powers sign a treaty to end all testing and development of nuclear weapons.
2002 - Two gunmen attack a Hindu temple complex in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, killing at least 30 people and wounding 74 before being killed by commandos.
2008 - Luxury hotel Atlantis on the Palm Jumeirah opens to the public in Dubai.
2011 - UAE elects 20 representatives for the 2011 Federal Nation Council.
2013 - A major earthquake hits a remote part of western Pakistan, killing at least 45 people.
2014 - An overcrowded bus plunges off a mountain road into a reservoir in a Himalayan region in India, killing 23 people.
2015 - At least 769 people are killed in a stampede in Mina, Saudi Arabia.
