Sharjah launches Air Arabia
2003 - Air Arabia, the national airline being launched by Sharjah, will have a share capital of Dh10 million and an operational capital of Dh50 million, Shaikh Abdullah Bin Mohammad Al Thani (above right), chairman of Sharjah Department of Civil Aviation, said. He said capital would be split 60:40 between the Department of Civil Aviation and the Sharjah International Airport Authority and shares would have a Dh1,000 face value. “We will be a full-fledged UAE national airline from Sharjah,” he said. “We will have bilateral agreements between the UAE and other countries.” Shaikh Abdullah added. In line with the country’s open-sky policy, Air Arabia would neither enjoy any preferential treatment, nor would airlines flying to Sharjah be disadvantaged by the new airline.
February 4
1874 - British forces under Garnet Wolseley burn Kumasi, Ghana, ending Ashanti War.
1899 - Filipinos stage revolt against the US because independence is not granted.
1922 - Japan agrees to restore Shantung to China.
1938 - Adolf Hitler assumes office of German war minister and names Joachim von Ribbentrop foreign minister.
1945 - US President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin begin a wartime conference at Yalta.
1948 - Sri Lanka becomes a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth.
1969 - Yasser Arafat takes over as Chairman of the PLO.
1972 - Britain and nine other nations recognise East Pakistan as independent nation of Bangladesh.
1980 - Abul Hassan Bani-Sadr takes office as the first President of Iran.
1981 - Gulf Cooperation Council is formed.
1986 - Police defuses a large bomb found in a third-floor toilet of the Eiffel Tower, just an hour-and-a-half before it was due to explode.
1990 - Terrorists ambush bus carrying Israeli tourists in Egypt, killing nine people and wounding 20.
1995 - Chechen rebels shoot down first Russian jet fighter of the war, downing an Su-25 with anti-aircraft guns near Grozny.
1997 - Nawaz Sharif clinches a landslide victory in Pakistan’s general election.
1998 - A 6.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tremors in Afghanistan’s remote northeast kill at least 4,500 people.
2004 - Social networking website Facebook is launched.
2006 - Betty Friedan, a founder of the modern feminist movement in US, dies at the age of 85.
2013 - Twenty-four people are killed when a bus and a truck collide on the Al Ain-Abu Dhabi road.
2014 - Satya Nadella becomes the new CEO of Microsoft.
2015 - A plane with 53 passengers crashes in Taipei, Taiwan, killing at least 23 people.
2017 - UN Security Council lifts sanctions on Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
