2000 – In Yemen tribesmen released Kenneth White (54), an American oil executive, who was kidnapped a month ago.
2001 – The space shuttle Atlantis’ astronauts installed the $1.4 billion Destiny laboratory on the international space station.
2003 – Afghanistan became the 89th nation to join the International Criminal Court.
2003 – In Kabul, Afghanistan, Germany and the Netherlands took control of the 22-nation peacekeeping force (ISAF) charged with keeping order, replacing Turkey.
2003 - A Chinese court convicted U.S.-based dissident Wang Bingzhang on spying and terrorism charges and sentenced him to life in prison.
2003 – France, Germany and Belgium blocked NATO efforts to begin planning for possible Iraqi attacks against Turkey. Turkey responds and becomes the first country in NATO’s 53-year history to publicly invoke Article 4 of the alliance’s mutual defense treaty which binds the 19 allies to talks when one perceives a threat to its “territorial integrity, political independence or security”.
2003 – Iraq agreed to allow U-2 surveillance flights over its territory, meeting a key demand by U.N. inspectors searching for banned weapons; President Bush, however, brushed aside Iraqi concessions as too little, too late.
2004 – The US broke ground for a new U.S. Embassy compound in the Chinese capital, billed by the American government as the largest State Department project ever built on foreign soil.
2004 – Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi met with Libya leader Moammar Gadhafi, and the United States said it had restored diplomatic contacts with the country. In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair held talks with the Libyan foreign minister.
2005 – New York civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was convicted of smuggling messages of violence from one of her jailed clients, radical Egyptian sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, to his terrorist disciples on the outside. In 2006 Stewart was sentenced to 28 months in prison.
2005 – North Korea announced for the first time that it has nuclear arms and rejected moves to restart disarmament talks anytime soon, saying it needs the weapons as protection against an increasingly hostile United States.
2007 - David Petraeus was made commander of Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF-I), the four-star post that oversees all coalition forces in country, replacing General George Casey. In his new position, Petraeus oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq and employed them in the new “Surge” strategy outlined by the Bush administration. 2007 also saw a sharp increase in insurgent chlorine bombings.
2008 – U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also arrives in Iraq from a Germany security conference to meet with Iraqi leaders, General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker.
2013 – American general Joseph F. Dunford, Jr. takes over command of NATO forces in Afghanistan, replacing John R. Allen.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/february-10/
