Today is Monday Dec. 7 the 341st day of 1998. There are 24 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1815 - France's Marshal Ney is shot after treason trial for aiding Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo. 1858 - French and Spanish announce blockade of Cochin China. 1895 - Ethiopians defeat Italians at Ambia Alagi Abyssinia. 1901 - England and Italy agree on settling Sudan frontier. 1921 - Austria and the United States resume diplomatic relations. 1922 - Northern Ireland votes for nonalignment in Irish Free State. 1941 - Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor Hawaii the Philippines and British Malaysia Dec. 8 in Asia. 1949 - Nationalist government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek fleeing the Communist takeover of mainland China establishes its seat of government in Taiwan. 1952 - Riots break out in French Morocco. 1953 - David Ben-Gurion resigns as premier of Israel. 1970 - East Pakistan-based Awami League wins a majority government in Pakistan's general elections. In response President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan suspends the government triggering widespread rioting in East Pakistan now Bangladesh. Deep divisions between East and West Pakistan lead to civil war. 1971 - Unmanned Soviet space capsule sends back radio and television signals from planet Mars. 1972 - Imelda Marcos wife of Philippines' President Ferdinand Marcos is slashed during public ceremony in Manila by man who is killed at the scene. 1974 - Archbishop Makarios returns to Cyprus after five months in exile and says he will pardon those who plotted his overthrow. 1975 - Indonesia invades East Timor. 1988 - Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at United Nations announces unilateral reduction of his country's troops tanks combat aircraft and artillery; massive earthquake in Soviet Armenia claims at least 25000 lives. 1989 - Republic of Lithuania abolishes constitutional guarantee of communist supremacy and legalizes multiparty system. 1990 - GATT talks among 107 nations are suspended after failure to end impasse between U.S. and EC over reductions in farm subsidies. 1992 - The Indian Government announces a ban on fundamentalist groups after more than 200 Muslim and Hindus are killed and a Muslim shrine in Ayodhya is demolished. 1993 - Ivory Coast President Felix Houphouet-Boigny Africa's longest-serving ruler dies. 1994 - PLO chairman Yasser Arafat pledges to protect Israelis from militant Islamic terrorists and insists that all Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza respect his authority as ``the law.'' 1994 - President Sam Nujoma's ruling South-West Africa People's Organization wins more than two-thirds of the vote in Namibian national elections. 1995 - A probe from the Galileo spacecraft enters the gases of Jupiter's atmosphere and sends back 75 minutes of data before it disintegrates. 1996 - After nearly 18 days aloft Columbia and its astronauts return to Earth ending the longest space shuttle flight ever. 1997 - One Austrian and two American skydivers are killed when their parachutes fail to open over the South Pole. Today's Birthdays: Mary Queen of Scots 1542-1587; Pietro Mascagni Italian composer 1863-1945; Mario Soares first elected president of Portugal in 60 years 1924--; Noam Chomsky American linguist and political activist 1928--; Thought For Today: Any frontal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession their ignorance Hendrik Willem van Loon Dutch-American journalist and lecturer 1882-1944. APW19981201.1087.txt.body.html APW19981201.0842.txt.body.html