Somehow I was not subcribed to this bug so have only just seen the replies.
Yes, I had already suspected libical3, especially after evolution showed the same effect. I confirm that upgrading to libical 3.0.16 "fixes" the problem. Noting that you are the author, I would like to ask for a way of supressing a huge number of alarms triggered when I read in an old calendar.ics to restore kalarm. I have had that before. The ics file contained appointments from at least 5 years ago, many with weekly repeats. That saturated the toolbar and generated hundred of alarm windows which were a huge pain to clear away. I could find no way to get kAlarm to suppress such old alarms. Perhaps I missed it somewhere. I guess this bug should now be closed. Should I do that? ael