Way back when: Today in history
BY GENE CURTIS
Thursday, February 14, 2013
2/14/13 at 3:21 AM
1989 - Bhopal issue settled
Union Carbide agreed to a court-ordered settlement that required it to pay $470 million to the government of India as a result of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak that killed 3,300 people and injured about 20,000.
Attorneys for the government and Union Carbide agreed rapidly with the court order but activists in Bhopal considered it a betrayal of the victims in the Dec. 3, 1984, disaster when the white vapor of methyl isocyanate seeped from a storage tank at the plant operated by Union Carbide's Indian subsidiary and drifted into Bhopal.
2005 - Former PM killed
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who had left office in October, was assassinated by a bomb blast that wounded and killed 20, including Hairiri, and carved a 30-foot hole in a Beirut street.
The United States called the attack "a terrible reminder" that Lebanon still must shake free of occupation by Syria, but Syria denied any role and condemned the assassination.
A previously unknown group, Support and Jihad in Syria and Lebanon, said in a video broadcast on Al-Jazeera television that it carried out the bombing, which it termed a suicide operation.
2006 - Iran uranium work
Iran announced that it had resumed small-scale uranium enrichment but insisted that its nuclear activity was aimed solely at generating electricity, although France accused Iran of secretly making atomic weapons. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said "No civilian nuclear program can explain the Iranian nuclear program. It is a clandestine military nuclear program." Iran denied the accusation.
2008 - 5 killed at university
Former student Stephen Kazmierczak stepped from behind a screen on the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb and opened fire with a shotgun and two pistols, killing five students before committing suicide. Terrified students in the geology class ran for cover as Kazmierczak, 27, who was dressed in black, began shooting.
Kazmierczak graduated from NIU in 2007 and was a graduate student in sociology there before leaving a year ago and moving on to the graduate school of social work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 130 miles away.
His girlfriend said he called her shortly after midnight and told her "not to forget about him." She said Kazmierczak was anything but a monster, describing him as "probably the nicest, (most) caring person ever."
Associated Images:
Stephen Kazmierczak killed five students and himself at Northern Illinois University on Feb. 14, 2008. AP file
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