Timeline of 2003 January - March
Return to home
2003 Jan 1,
Oklahoma romped past Washington State 34-14 in the Rose Bowl; Georgia
defeated Florida State 26-13 in the Sugar Bowl; Notre Dame saw its
sixth straight bowl loss, losing to North Carolina State 28-6 in the
Gator Bowl.
(AP, 1/1/04)
2003 Jan 1, More than two dozen
surgeons stopped working in West Virginia to protest the high cost of
malpractice insurance.
(AP, 1/1/04)
2003 Jan 1, U.S. and British
warplanes attacked an Iraqi mobile radar system after it entered the
southern no-fly zone.
(AP, 1/1/03)
2003 Jan 1, Joe Foss (87), former
South Dakota Gov. and World War II hero who also served as president of
the National Rifle Association and commissioner of the American
Football League, died at an Arizona hospital.
(AP, 1/1/04)
2003 Jan 1, In Bosnia the EU
hoisted its dark blue banner to officially mark the transfer of
peacekeeping duties from the United Nations, while NATO-led troops
handed over control of Sarajevo's airport to Bosnian authorities.
(AP, 1/1/03)
2003 Jan 1, Brazil's first elected
leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, took office. Gilberto
Gill (60), musician, became minister of culture.
(SFC, 1/2/03, p.A3)(AP, 1/1/04)
2003 Jan 1, In Canada a new gun
law came into effect that required the registration of all rifles and
shotguns.
(AP, 1/2/03)
2003 Jan 1, In Gaza 3 Palestinian
boys were shot and killed by soldiers after scaling a fence around
Jewish settlements. Thousands of Palestinians marched in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip to mark the 38th anniversary of the founding of Arafat's
Fatah movement.
(AP, 1/2/03)(SFC, 1/2/03, p.A5)
2003 Jan 1, Dumitru Tinu (62), a
leading Romanian journalist who covered the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia and steered his newspaper along independent lines after
communism ended, died in a car accident.
(AP, 1/1/03)
2003 Jan 2, President Bush,
seeking to counter Democratic criticisms that his economic policies
favored the rich, said the economic-stimulus plan he was going to
unveil the following week would focus on jobs and the unemployed.
(AP, 1/2/04)
2003 Jan 2, Sen. John Edwards of
North Carolina announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination
for president.
(WSJ, 11/3/04, p.A6)
2003 Jan 2, Sydney Omarr (76), the
astrologer to the stars whose horoscopes appeared in more than 200
newspapers, died in Santa Monica, Calif.
(AP, 1/2/04)
2003 Jan 2, It was reported that
scientists had mapped chromosome 14, the 4th of 24 and longest
sequenced to date.
(AP, 1/2/03)
2003 Jan 2, A Palestinian gunman
was killed several hours after he tried to shoot an Israeli couple and
then holed up inside their house in the Israeli village of Maor.
(AP, 1/2/03)
2003 Jan 2, A motorized rubber
boat carrying 41 illegal immigrants sank off the southern coast of
Spain, and six passengers drowned.
(AP, 1/2/03)
2003 Jan 3, Ohio State beat Miami
in the Fiesta Bowl 31-24 in double overtime to become the national
college football champion.
(SFC, 1/4/03, p.C1)
2003 Jan 3, President George W.
Bush visited Fort Hood in Texas, where he rallied Army troops as the
nation faced the prospect of war with Iraq.
(AP, 1/3/04)
2003 Jan 3, David Westerfield, the
man who'd kidnapped and murdered 7-year-old neighbor Danielle van Dam,
was sentenced to death by a judge in San Diego.
(AP, 1/3/04)
2003 Jan 3, In Brazil Pres. Silva
delayed a plan to spend $700 million on jet fighters. The military's
$7.4 billion budget is scheduled to be cut by $282 million.
(AP, 1/3/03)
2003 Jan 3, Ivory Coast Pres.
Laurent Gbagbo pledged to cease hostilities and send home foreign
mercenaries fighting with loyalist troops.
(AP, 1/3/03)
2003 Jan 3, A Peruvian court
struck down anti-terror laws that had been used to quash rebel
movements in the 1990s.
(AP, 1/3/03)
2003 Jan 3, Jose Maria Gironella
(85), Spanish author, died. His work included "The Cypresses Believe in
God," a trilogy based on the 1936-1939 Civil War, for which he won the
1953 National Literary prize.
(SFC, 2/10/03, p.B5)
2003 Jan 3, In Caracas, Venezuela,
clashes between opponents and supporters of Pres. Chavez left at least
eighty people wounded.
(AP, 1/3/03)
2003 Jan 4, Pres. Bush said he
will ask Congress to boost federal education aid for poor children by
$1 billion. As Bush put the finishing touches on an economic growth
package costing $674 billion over 10 years, Democrats who wanted his
job, pledged to scuttle what they characterized as a plan that would
help the wealthy without reviving the economy.
(AP, 1/4/03)(AP, 1/4/04)
2003 Jan 4, Clonaid, the company
that claims to have produced the first human clone, said a second child
was born to a Dutch lesbian Jan 3.
(AP, 1/5/03)(SSFC, 1/5/03,
p.A22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonaid)
2003 Jan 4, Conrad L. Hall (76),
Oscar-winning cinematographer, died in Santa Monica, Calif.
(AP, 1/4/04)
2003 Jan 4, In Algeria Islamic
militants (GSPC) ambushed a military convoy in the northeast village of
Theniet el-Abed. 43 soldiers were killed and 19 wounded.
(AP, 1/5/03)
2003 Jan 4, In southern Iran a bus
carrying university students overturned on a rain-slick road, killing
15 people and injuring 18 others.
(AP, 1/5/03)
2003 Jan 4, Ivory Coast's main
rebel movement agreed to respect an oft-violated cease-fire and to
resume peace talks with the government later this month in Paris.
(AP, 1/4/03)
2003 Jan 4, A boat from Somalia to
Yemen developed engine trouble and capsized and at least 80 people were
feared dead.
(AP, 1/16/03)
2003 Jan 5, In Edinburg, Texas, 6
men were shot to death in a home invasion that involved weapons and
drugs.
(SFC, 1/6/03, p.A8)
2003 Jan 5, Jean Kerr (79), author
and playwright, died. Her books included "Please Don't Eat the Daisies."
(SFC, 1/7/03, p.A22)
2003 Jan 5, In Algeria rebels
killed 13 people form 2 families near the capital in Zabana. The
Armed Islamic Group was suspected.
(AP, 1/5/03)
2003 Jan 5, In Bhutan Indian
separatists said 50 Indian soldiers attacked their camps. 15 soldiers
and 7 rebels were reported killed.
(SFC, 1/8/03, p.A16)
2003 Jan 5, British anti-terrorism
police arrested 6 men of North African origin after finding small
quantities of ricin, a lethal poison, in a London apartment.
(SFC, 1/8/03, p.A10)
2003 Jan 5, Roy Jenkins (82),
British politician, liberal reformer and biographer, died after
collapsing at his home in East Hendred.
(WSJ, 1/14/03, p.D6)
2003 Jan 5, Chinese media reported
that an unmanned Chinese space capsule had returned safely to Earth.
(AP, 1/5/04)
2003 Jan 5, In Israel 2
Palestinian suicide bombers blew themselves up minutes apart in a
central Tel Aviv area crowded with foreign workers, killing 23
bystanders in the bloodiest attack in six months.
(AP, 1/5/08)
2003 Jan 5, In Kosovo gunmen
killed 3 people including Tahir Zemaj, a former Albanian rebel leader.
(WSJ, 1/6/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 5, In Lithuania rightist
Rolandas Paksas (46), a former stunt pilot and PM in 1999 and 2000, was
elected president in a surprise victory over Pres. Adamkus, 54.9% vs.
45%. Paksas promised to keep Lithuania closely aligned with the West.
The election of Paksas was bankrolled by Yuri Borisov, a Russian-born
dealer in helicopter parts.
(AP, 1/6/03)(Econ, 1/10/04, p.46)
2003 Jan 5, The Laos government
declared this day a national holiday in honor of King Fangum, "the
father of Lao unity" and the 650th anniversary of the founding of Lan
Xang in1353.
(AP, 1/6/03)
2003 Jan 6, US Surgeon General Dr.
Richard Carmona called obesity the fastest growing cause of illness and
death in the US.
(SFC, 1/7/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 6, U.S. warplanes bombed
two Iraqi anti-aircraft radars that threatened pilots patrolling the
southern no-fly zone.
(AP, 1/7/03)
2003 Jan 6, Thousands of Marines,
sailors and soldiers headed for the Persian Gulf region, shipping out
from California, Georgia and Maryland as the buildup for a possible war
with Iraq accelerated sharply.
(AP, 1/6/04)
2003 Jan 6, California Gov. Davis
promised to create 500,000 new jobs over the next 4 years.
(AP, 1/7/03)
2003 Jan 6, The WSJ reported that
Int'l. Steel offered about $1 billion to buy most of the assets of
Bethlehem Steel, creating the largest US steel company.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R8)
2003 Jan 6, Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein accused U.N. inspectors of engaging in "intelligence work"
instead of searching for suspected nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons in his country.
(AP, 1/6/04)
2003 Jan 6, Rebels in western
Ivory Coast attacked French troops and French officials said 30 rebels
were killed and nine soldiers wounded.
(AP, 1/6/03)
2003 Jan 6, In Kenya 12 people
were killed when members of the outlawed Mungiki sect attacked minibus
operators over control of bus stops in Nakuru, 84 miles northwest of
Nairobi. 38 people were soon arrested.
(AP, 1/7/03)
2003 Jan 6, In Mexico a bus with
failing brakes swerved off a mountain highway and into a deep ravine in
Zacatecas state, killing 18 people and injuring 23.
(AP, 1/7/03)
2003 Jan 7, Pres. Bush put forward
a $674 billion "growth and jobs" economic stimulus plan that would
provide tax relief to an estimated 92 million Americans by accelerating
income tax rate cuts, wiping out all federal taxes on stock dividends
paid to investors and boosting the child tax credit by $400 per child.
(AP, 1/7/03)(SFC, 1/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 7, US Marines, both
active and reserves, were ordered to remain in service for the coming
12 months.
(SFC, 1/10/03, p.A12)
2003 Jan 7, Police in London
announced they had found traces of the deadly poison ricin in a north
London apartment and arrested six men in connection with the virulent
toxin that has been linked to al-Qaida terrorists and Iraq.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2003 Jan 7, In Colombia rebels
ambushed a police convoy near the capital, killing at least 8 officers
and wounding 5 in a bold, daylight attack.
(AP, 1/7/03)
2003 Jan 7, In Congo a military
court convicted and sentenced 26 people to death in the Jan 16, 2001
assassination of Congo's president, Laurent Kabila.
(AP, 1/7/03)(SFC, 1/8/03, p.A16)
2003 Jan 7, In Egypt Orthodox
Christmas was marked for the first time as a national holiday in this
predominantly Muslim nation.
(AP, 1/7/03)
2003 Jan 7, Israeli troops
exchanged fire with Palestinian militiamen for 4 hours, killing 3
gunmen before withdrawing from the outskirts of a refugee camp. The
Israeli government put new restrictions on travel by Palestinians.
(AP, 1/7/03)(SFC, 1/8/03, p.A11)
2003 Jan 7, In South Africa a
passenger train collided with a freight train, killing 10 people and
injuring 49.
(AP, 1/7/03)
2003 Jan 7, In northeastern Uganda
rival tribesmen armed with spears and guns clashed over cattle, leaving
at least 52 people dead in two days of fighting. At least 35 Pokot and
17 Karamojong were killed.
(AP, 1/10/03)
2003 Jan 8, Pres. Bush signed an
emergency extension of federal unemployment benefits following approval
by the 108th Congress. It extended 26 weeks of state aid with 13 weeks
of federal aid.
(SFC, 1/9/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 8, A federal appeals
court ruled that Pres. Bush could order U.S. citizens captured overseas
indefinitely detained as enemy combatants without the rights normally
afforded citizens charged in criminal cases.
(AP, 1/8/04)
2003 Jan 8, In Charlotte, NC, a US
Airways Express Beech 1900 turboprop crashed on takeoff and all 21
aboard were killed.
(SFC, 1/9/03, p.A3)
2003 Jan 8, In Mali the 3rd annual
Festival of the Desert ended in Essakane.
(SFC, 1/11/03, p.D1)
2003 Jan 8, Manuel Ciervides
Lacayo, the Panamanian consul to Guayaquil, Ecuador, was shot and
killed while vacationing in Panama.
(AP, 1/9/03)
2003 Jan 8, In Turkey the pilot of
the British Aerospace RJ-100 missed the runway because of heavy fog in
the southeastern city of Diayarbakir. 75 people were killed with 5
survivors.
(AP, 1/9/03)(WSJ, 1/9/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 8, A UN team was reported
to be investigating reports that Congolese rebel troops had killed and
eaten Pygmies in northeastern Congo. UN authorities confirmed the
reports Jan 15 and identified the rebel campaign as "Operation Clean
Slate."
(AP, 1/8/03)(SFC, 1/16/03, p.A9)
2003 Jan 9, The Bush
administration said federal airport security screeners will not be
allowed to unionize so as not to complicate the war on terrorism.
(WSJ, 1/10/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 9, Peter Tinniswood (66),
British author of plays for TV, radio and stage, died from cancer.
(AP, 1/10/03)
2003 Jan 9, Six Russian soldiers
and police officers were killed in Chechnya in the last 24 hours.
Another 9 Russian soldiers died when their convoy came under rebel fire
in Grozny. Two rebels were killed in the fighting.
(AP, 1/10/03)(AP, 1/11/03)
2003 Jan 9, In northeast Colombia
rebels detonated a car bomb that killed 4 people in a 2nd attack in 2
days.
(WSJ, 1/10/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 9, India's PM Vajpayee
announced the introduction of legislation for dual citizenship for
people of Indian origin in "certain countries."
(SSFC, 1/12/03, p.A4)
2003 Jan 9, UN weapons inspectors
said there's no "smoking gun" to prove Iraq has nuclear, chemical or
biological weapons, but they demanded that Baghdad provide private
access to scientists and fresh evidence to back its claim that it had
destroyed its weapons of mass destruction.
(AP, 1/9/08)
2003 Jan 9, A Peruvian airliner
carrying 46 people, including eight children, disappeared amid
cloud-covered mountains in the Amazon jungle. On Jan 11 rescue workers
found the wreckage of TANS Airlines Flight 222, a Fokker 28 near the
jungle town of Chachapoyas. There were no survivors.
(AP, 1/9/03)(AP, 1/11/03)
2003 Jan 9, In southeastern Turkey
2 Turkish F-4 warplanes collided in heavy fog during a training flight
killing the four crew members.
(AP, 1/9/03)
2003 Jan 9, Thousands of
Venezuelan bank workers stayed home to support a nationwide strike
seeking new presidential elections.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2003 Jan 10, The US Labor Dept.
reported that 101,000 jobs were lost in December with 8.6 million (6%)
officially unemployed.
(SFC, 1/11/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 10, With just three days
left in office, Illinois Gov. George Ryan pardoned four death row
inmates he said had been tortured by Chicago police into falsely
confessing to murders in the 1980's.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2003 Jan 10, An Australian
euthanasia campaigner complained that customs officials seized a
machine he designed to help people kill themselves as he prepared to
board a flight to the United States.
(AP, 1/10/03)
2003 Jan 10, Benin's National
Voodoo Day drew about 12,000 people.
(AP, 1/10/03)
2003 Jan 10, Djiboutians chose a
new 65-seat parliament in elections. Parties allied with Pres. Ismael
Omar Guelleh swept Djibouti's first multi-party legislative elections.
The bloc of four parties known as the Union for the Presidential
Majority, or UMP, won 62.7 percent of the vote to 37.3 percent for the
four-party opposition alliance known as the Union for a Democratic
Alternative.
(AP, 1/10/03)(AP, 1/11/03)
2003 Jan 10, The European Union
proposed a diplomatic initiative to avoid war against Iraq and
increased pressure on Washington to pursue a peaceful solution to the
crisis over Iraq's arms programs.
(AP, 1/10/03)
2003 Jan 10, Iraq blocked all
e-mail services following a batch of messages from disguised US
agencies urging dissent and military defections. Some service was
restored the next day.
(SSFC, 1/12/03, p.A14)
2003 Jan 10, North Korea announced
that it was pulling out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
(SFC, 1/10/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 10, It was reported that
an estimated 3,000 Pakistani boys are sold each year to the gulf states
to work as camel jockeys.
(SFC, 1/10/03, p.A17)
2003 Jan 10, In Venezuela
opponents of President Hugo Chavez took to the streets as a bank strike
prompted authorities to suspend dollar auctions for a second day in a
row after Venezuela's currency fell.
(AP, 1/10/03)
2003 Jan 11, In Illinois out-going
Gov. Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 Death Row inmates one day after
he freed 4 death row inmates. He called the death penalty process
"arbitrary and capricious, and therefore immoral." The 4 death row
inmates had all been convicted on evidence gathered by police Lt. Jon
Burge. In 2008 Burge was arrested and charged with lying when he denied
in 2003 that he and detectives under his command tortured murder
suspects.
(SFC, 1/11/03, p.A3)(SSFC, 1/12/03, p.A1)(AP,
1/11/08)(SFC, 10/22/08, p.A3)
2003 Jan 11, Afghan warlord Abdul
Rashid Dostum released 50 members of the Taliban militia captured
during fighting more than a year ago.
(AP, 1/12/03)
2003 Jan 11, The death toll from
Bangladesh's coldest winter in six years reached 489. A three-week cold
spell in South Asia with near freezing temperatures aggravated by
chilly winds raised the total death toll to 779.
(AP, 1/11/03)
2003 Jan 11, In Brazil mudslides
caused by torrential rains near Rio de Janeiro left 17
dead.
(AP, 1/12/03)
2003 Jan 11, In Chechnya 4 Russian
servicemen were killed in clashes, while 4 soldiers died when their
vehicles struck land mines.
(AP, 1/12/03)
2003 Jan 11, In northern China an
explosion ripped through a coal mine, leaving 34 people missing a day
after a blast in a neighboring province killed 8 miners.
(AP, 1/11/03)
2003 Jan 11, It was reported that
former combatants from Liberia and Sierra Leone were pouring into Ivory
Coast to fight with the rebels.
(SFC, 1/11/03, p.A8)
2003 Jan 11, Japan's Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi, wrapping up a three-day visit to the
Russian capital, called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons in an
address at a leading atomic energy research center.
(AP, 1/11/03)
2003 Jan 11, North Korea said it
might end a self-imposed moratorium on missile testing and warned that
it was ready to "mercilessly wipe out" other nations that infringe upon
its sovereignty. North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
(AP, 1/11/03)(SFC, 6/28/08, p.A3)
2003 Jan 11, Philippine army
troops have occupied a southern mountain village in Sultan Kudarat
province after driving away a large group of Moro Islamic separatists
and a kidnap gang in fierce clashes that killed at least 20 rebels and
allies.
(AP, 1/12/03)
2003 Jan 11, Another Turkish
prisoner died on a hunger strike, raising the death toll in the protest
against Turkey's maximum security prisons to 64 people.
(AP, 1/12/03)
2003 Jan 12, It was reported that
the $250 billion-a-year US Medicare program was riddled with conflicts
of interest and fraud estimated at $50-75 billion.
(SSFC, 1/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 12, Steve Case announced
he was stepping down as chairman of the conglomerate he'd helped to
create. Shareholders blamed him for AOL Time Warner's sharp fall in
fortunes. The Board soon named Richard Parsons as chairman.
(AP, 1/12/04)(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R8)
2003 Jan 12, Maurice Gibb (53),
member of the Bee Gees musical group, died in Miami following surgery
for a blocked intestine. The group's work included the 1977 "Saturday
Night Fever" album.
(SSFC, 1/12/03, p.A2)
2003 Jan 12, In Argentina former
military dictator Leopoldo F. Galtieri (76), who in 1982 led Argentina
into the Falkland Islands war against Britain, died.
(AP, 1/12/03)
2003 Jan 12, The death toll from a
month-long cold spell rose to 986 people in northern India, Nepal and
Bangladesh.
(AP, 1/13/03)
2003 Jan 12, Three missiles fired
from an Israeli helicopter missed their apparent target, Islamic
militants riding in a car, and killed two 15 year-old Palestinian boys,
seriously wounding another teen. In Israel 7 Palestinians, two other
Arab attackers and two Israelis were killed in raids and infiltrations.
(AP, 1/13/03)(SFC, 1/13/03, p.A3)
2003 Jan 12, Kinji Fukasaku (72),
Japanese film director, died. His films included "Battle without Honor
and Humanity" (1973), "Cops vs. Thugs" (1975), "Yakuza Graveyard"
(1976) and "Graveyard of Honor" (1976) and "The Geisha House" (1999).
(SFC, 1/28/03, p.A15)
2003 Jan 13, Connecticut Sen.
Joseph Lieberman jumped into the 2004 race for president.
(AP, 1/13/04)
2003 Jan 13, The owners of FAO
Schwarz filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
(AP, 1/13/04)
2003 Jan 13, Rock musician Pete
Townshend was arrested in London on suspicion of possessing indecent
images of children. Townshend acknowledged using an Internet Web site
advertising child pornography, but said he was not a pedophile and was
only doing research for an autobiography dealing with his own suspected
childhood sexual abuse; he was eventually cleared of possessing
pornographic images of children.
(AP, 1/13/08)
2003 Jan 13, US warplanes struck
an anti-ship missile launcher in southern Iraq. US planes also dropped
leaflets over An Najaf, about 85 miles southeast of Baghdad. It was the
14th drop in 3 months.
(AP, 1/13/03)
2003 Jan 13, It was reported that
Iraq has experienced a dramatic increase in child cancers in recent
years. Blame was cast on the US use of depleted uranium during the 1991
Gulf War.
(SFC, 1/13/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 13, Dutch Foreign
Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer took over as head of the 55-nation
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for 2003. He said
the Vienna-based OSCE would sharpen its efforts to improve border
security and police cooperation and cut off the flow of cash to
terrorist groups.
(AP, 1/13/03)
2003 Jan 13, UN inspectors took
their hunt for banned arms to science and technology colleges in
Baghdad, and the top nuclear inspector said his teams' mission would
take several more months.
(AP, 1/13/03)
2003 Jan 13, An Indonesia court
sentenced Ang Kiem Soei, a Dutch citizen of Chinese descent, to death
for operating what police say was one of the biggest ecstasy factories
in Southeast Asia.
(AP, 1/13/03)
2003 Jan 13, Two Palestinians
threw grenades at an Israeli bus in the Gaza Strip and were shot dead
by Israeli troops, and an Islamic Jihad activist was killed in an
explosion in the West Bank.
(AP, 1/14/03)
2003 Jan 13, Protesters waved
Puerto Rican flags and shouted "Navy get out!" as fighter jets dropped
inert bombs over Vieques in what the Navy says will be its last round
of training on the island.
(AP, 1/14/03)
2003 Jan 13, Togo's Pres.
Gnassingbe Eyadema, celebrated 36 years in power Monday with a military
parade, a display derided by opposition groups as "a sheer waste of
time."
(AP, 1/13/03)
2003 Jan 14, Kmart Corporation
announced its biggest round of cutbacks yet, saying it would close 326
more stores and eliminate 37,000 more jobs in hopes of getting out of
bankruptcy by the end of April 2003. Kmart emerged from Chapter 11
protection in May 2003.
(AP, 1/14/08)
2003 Jan 14, Thousands of General
Electric Company employees across the country began a two-day strike to
protest higher health insurance costs.
(AP, 1/14/04)
2003 Jan 14, Hundreds of American
soldiers arrived in Israel for joint maneuvers with anti-missile
defenses, aimed at protecting against any Iraqi strikes if the United
States attacks Iraq.
(AP, 1/15/03)
2003 Jan 14, In England Constable
Stephen Oake was stabbed to death during a raid on a Manchester
apartment associated with terror suspects and the poison ricin.
(SFC, 1/17/03, p.A12)
2003 Jan 14, North Korea said that
it was running out of patience and warned it was prepared to exercise
"options" in its dispute with the United States over its nuclear
activities.
(AP, 1/14/03)
2003 Jan 15, White House budget
director Mitchell Daniels predicted federal deficits will exceed $200
billion and probably go over $300 billion in 2004.
(SFC, 1/16/03, p.A7)(AP, 1/15/04)
2003 Jan 15, A Texas Tech
professor was arrested on a complaint of giving false information to
the FBI. Authorities said Thomas C. Butler had reported that vials
containing deadly bacteria were missing when, in fact, he had destroyed
them. Butler was later acquitted at trial of the most serious charges
against him, including lying to the FBI.
(AP, 1/15/04)
2003 Jan 15, Mickey Mouse and The
Walt Disney Company scored a big victory as the Supreme Court upheld
longer copyright protections for cartoon characters, songs, books and
other creations worth billions of dollars.
(AP, 1/15/04)
2003 Jan 15, The EU Parliament
voted to ban the use of animals to test cosmetics by 2009. Imports of
cosmetics using animal testing would also be banned.
(WSJ, 1/16/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 15, Lufthansa introduced
Internet access to passengers on a flight from Germany to Washington DC.
(SFC, 1/15/03, p.B1)
2003 Jan 15, Former New York City
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani ended a two-day visit to Mexico's capital,
declaring that fighting government corruption will be crucial in
lowering crime.
(AP, 1/15/03)
2003 Jan 16, The Bush
administration urged the Supreme Court to strike down admissions
policies at the University of Michigan and its law school, arguing that
university admissions programs that gave an edge to minority students
were unconstitutional.
(AP, 1/16/04)
2003 Jan 16, The US government
announced that men from Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia and Kuwait
will be subject to fingerprints, photographs and interviews in addition
to men from 18 other Arab and Muslim countries.
(SFC, 1/16/03, p.A6)
2003 Jan 16, AOL Time Warner chief
executive Dick Parsons was tapped to be the media conglomerate's new
chairman, succeeding Steve Case.
(AP, 1/16/04)
2003 Jan 16, Microsoft announced
its 1st dividend along with a stock split.
(SFC, 1/17/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 16, The shuttle Columbia
carried a crew of 7 for a 16-day mission. Col. Ilan Ramon was aboard as
Israel's 1st astronaut. The mission ended in tragedy on Feb. 1, when
the shuttle broke up during its return descent, killing all seven crew
members.
(SFC, 1/17/03, p.A2)(AP, 1/16/04)
2003 Jan 16, Argentina reached a
preliminary agreement with the International Monetary Fund to avoid
default.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 16, In Brazil mudslides
killed at least 36 people in Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo states.
(SFC, 1/17/03, p.A10)(AP, 1/18/03)
2003 Jan 16, In Colombia a car
bomb exploded outside the attorney general's office in Medellin,
killing three people and wounding at least 19. Gunmen entered the tiny
village of Dos Quebradas and killed a dozen people, leaving surviving
villagers terrified and waiting for government forces to arrive. At
least 16 people were killed by FARC rebels in villages around San
Carlos.
(AP, 1/16/03)(AP, 1/18/03)(AP, 1/19/03)
2003 Jan 16, The European Union's
Court of Justice ordered Spain and Italy to drop national rules on what
constitutes chocolate, saying they can no longer bar British and Irish
confections made with vegetable fats instead of cocoa butter.
(AP, 1/16/03)
2003 Jan 16, In Greenland Premier
Hans Enoksen, head of the social democratic Siumut party, struck a deal
with the island's liberal Atassut party. 2 days earlier Enoksen evicted
the left-wing Inuit Ataqatigitt party, leaving the Arctic island of
56,000 without a government. A spat had developed over the use of a
healer to chase away evil spirits from government offices.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Tom Ridge sailed
through Senate confirmation hearings on his way to becoming the
nation's first Homeland Security Department chief.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2003 Jan 17, Constellation Brands
of Fairport, NY, announced a $1.4 billion acquisition of Australia's
BRL Hardy. The combination would form the world's largest wine company.
(SFC, 1/18/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 17, Richard Crenna (75),
radio, film and TV actor, died.
(SFC, 1/20/03, p.B4)
2003 Jan 17, Margo Patterson Doss
(b.1920), former SF Chronicle columnist, died. In 1961 she began
writing her Sunday column “San Francisco at Your Feet” and continued
for 30 years. During the last decade of her life she gardened in
Bolinas and wrote for the Point Reyes Light.
(SFC, 1/22/09, p.B1)
2003 Jan 17, Gertrude Janeway
(93), the last known widow of a Union veteran from the Civil War, died
in Blaine, Tenn. She had married John Janeway in 1927 when he was 81
and she was barely 18.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2003 Jan 17, A bomb ripped through
a village in northern Bangladesh during an annual carnival, killing six
people and wounding six others.
(AP, 1/18/03)
2003 Jan 17, Parliament of the
Bosnian Serb ministate approved a Cabinet and Dragan Mikerevic (48) as
the new prime minister.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, France and Spain
opened the new 5.3-mile Somport tunnel through the western Pyrenees
mountains.
(AP, 1/18/03)
2003 Jan 17, On the 12th
anniversary of the Gulf War, a defiant Saddam Hussein called on his
people to rise up and defend the nation against a new U.S.-led attack.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2003 Jan 17, Iraq and Russia
signed three oil agreements for exploration and development of oil
fields in southern and western Iraq.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, In Kenya informer
William Mwaura Munuhe (27) was found dead at his home in the affluent
Nairobi suburb of Karen, two days after the U.S. Embassy and Kenyan
police tried to trap genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga.
(AP, 1/21/03)
2003 Jan 17, Massive flooding
caused by Cyclone Delfina ravaged parts of Malawi and Mozambique,
washing away homes and crops, submerging roads and bridges, and cutting
off electricity in the impoverished nations.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Two Palestinian
gunmen infiltrated the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, killing an
Israeli man as he opened the door of his home and wounding three other
people. One gunman was shot and killed in the attack.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Poland Prime Minister
Leszek Miller fired his health minister and 2 deputy finance ministers
resigned in the 2nd Cabinet reshuffle this month.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Russian prosecutors
presented a criminal dossier on feared Soviet secret police chief
Lavrenty Beria, including a list of hundreds of women he had allegedly
stalked and raped.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, The Strategic
Partnership with Africa (SPA), made of 15 developed nations,
international lending institutions and UN agencies, concluded its
annual meeting in Addis Ababa. More than 20 developed nations, lending
institutions and UN agencies agreed to increase aid to Africa.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Turkish troops killed
12 Kurdish rebels in the southeast over the past two days.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 18, Michelle Kwan won her
sixth straight U.S. Figure Skating Championships title and seventh
overall; Michael Weiss won his third U.S. men's title.
(AP, 1/18/04)
2003 Jan 18, In the US tens of
thousands rallied in Washington DC in an emphatic dissent against
preparations for war in Iraq. As many as 500,000 rallied outside the
Capitol. In SF the rally drew at least 100,000 by my count.
(AP, 1/19/03)(AR)(SSFC, 1/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 18, Heavy bush fires hit
Canberra, Australia, killing 4 people. At least 388 homes were
destroyed.
(AP, 1/19/03)
2003 Jan 18, In Bolivia a bus
slammed into a mountainside outside Cochabamba, killing 28 people and
injuring at least 30.
(AP, 1/20/03)
2003 Jan 18, In southern Colombia
FARC guerrillas blew up every home in the hamlet of La Union.
(AP, 1/19/03)
2003 Jan 18, The Czech Republic's
ruling party nominated former PM Milos Zeman as its new candidate to
replace President Vaclav Havel.
(AP, 1/18/03)
2003 Jan 18, UN officials warned
Iraq it was running out of time to cooperate and avoid war.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2003 Jan 18, Israeli soldiers
tracked and killed a 2nd Palestinian assailant who fled after an attack
on a Jewish outpost in the West Bank. The two slain Palestinians had
earlier killed one Israeli and injured three others the previous night.
(AP, 1/18/03)
2003 Jan 18, Activists in Tokyo
carried toy guns filled with flowers, one banner at a Moscow rally read
"Iraq isn't your ranch, Mr. Bush," and some 6,000 anti-war protesters
in Paris shouted, "Stop Bush! Stop war!"
(AP, 1/18/03)
2003 Jan 18, Moroccan rescue
workers found the bodies of 16 people who drowned while trying to
illegally enter Spain by crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in an
inflatable boat.
(AP, 1/19/03)
2003 Jan 18, Serhiy Naboka (47),
one of Ukraine's best-known journalists, and a reporter for a
U.S.-funded radio station, was found dead in his hotel room.
(AP, 1/18/03)
2003 Jan 18, In Venezuela at least
100,000 anti-government protesters staged a candlelight march in
Caracas.
(AP, 1/19/03)
2003 Jan 19, In the 60th Golden
Globes "The Hours" won as best drama and "Chicago" won as best musical
or comedy. Jack Nicholson won for his role in "About Schmidt" and
Nicole Kidman won for her role in The Hours. Martin Scorsese won as
best director for "Gangs of New York."
(SFC, 1/20/03, p.A2)
2003 Jan 19, The Oakland Raiders
won the AFC title game, beating the Tennessee Titans 41-24. The Tampa
Bay Buccaneers took the NFC Championship game, defeating the
Philadelphia Eagles 27-10.
(AP, 1/19/04)
2003 Jan 19, Colombian AUC gunmen
kidnapped three Americans (Robert Y. Pelton, Mark Wedeven and Megan A.
Smaker) just north of the Colombian border in Panama. The writer and 2
hikers were released Jan 23.
(AP, 1/22/03)(SFC, 1/24/03, p.A14)
2003 Jan 19, Hans Blix and
Mohamed El Baradei, the chief UN arms inspectors, sat down for urgent
talks with Iraqi officials.
(AP, 1/19/03)
2003 Jan 19, In Cuba more than 97
percent of voters showed overwhelming support for the nation's
socialist system by electing 609 candidates who ran uncontested for
parliament.
(AP, 1/20/03)
2003 Jan 19, Francoise Giroud
(86), France's 1st minister of women's affairs died. She co-founded one
of France's top news magazines and became a powerful force in French
post-war journalism at a time when few women were in the business. She
published an autobiography in 1997.
(AP, 1/19/03)(SFC, 1/21/03, p.A18)
2003 Jan 19, In western Mozambique
it was reported that 9 people had died of hunger in a village and some
175,000 people in the area are at risk of starvation.
(AP, 1/19/03)
2003 Jan 19, Alfredo Zalce
(b.1908), Mexican revolutionary artist, died.
(www.zalce.com/)
2003 Jan 19, Sierra Leone declared
ex-junta leader Johnny Paul Koroma a wanted man linking him to an
alleged plot to destabilize the country.
(AP, 1/19/03)
2003 Jan 19, Syria and Iran
support Turkey's proposal for a regional summit to seek a peaceful way
out of the Iraq standoff. Turkey has offered to hold the summit where
Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria would discuss the standoff
over Iraq.
(AP, 1/19/03)
2003 Jan 20, Secretary of State
Colin Powell, faced with stiff resistance and calls to go slow, bluntly
told the U.N. Security Council that the United Nations "must not
shrink" from its responsibility to disarm Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
(AP, 1/20/04)
2003 Jan 20, Energizer agreed to
buy the Shick-Wilkinson Sword razor business for $930 million from
Pfizer as it aimed to expand beyond batteries.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R8)
2003 Jan 20, Al Hirschfield
(b.1903), caricaturist of Hollywood stars, died in NYC at age 99.
(SFC, 1/21/03, p.A2)(Econ, 7/16/05, p.82)
2003 Jan 20, Pollster Burns W.
"Bud" Roper died in Cape Cod, Mass., at age 77.
(AP, 1/20/04)
2003 Jan 20, In Canada 7 members
of a ski party were killed in an avalanche near Durrand Glacier outside
of Banff National Park.
(WSJ, 1/22/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 20, In northeast China a
gas explosion tore through a coal mine, killing 16 workers at a
facility in the same city where another blast killed scores of miners
last year.
(AP, 1/21/03)
2003 Jan 20, In northern Colombia
FARC rebels ambushed a pickup truck carrying policemen, killing 6
officers and their civilian driver in a hail of gunfire and grenades.
(AP, 1/20/03)
2003 Jan 20-27, In Honduras a
drastic drop in oxygen in rivers and ponds may have killed 5.5 million
fish near the El Cahon hydroelectric plant.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2003 Jan 20, The chief UN arms
inspectors and Iraqi officials agreed on practical steps to greater
Iraqi cooperation in the UN disarmament program, including Baghdad's
encouragement of weapons scientists to submit to private UN interviews.
(AP, 1/20/03)
2003 Jan 20, The UN human rights
watchdog elected a Libyan diplomat as its president for this year,
despite concern from the United States about the country's poor record
on civil liberties and its alleged role in sponsoring terrorism.
(AP, 1/20/03)
2003 Jan 20, An Organization of
American States report accused Nicaragua of negligence for authorizing
a deal that allowed 3,000 Kalashnikov rifles meant for Panama to go to
a Colombian paramilitary militia.
(AP, 1/21/03)
2003 Jan 20, The leaders of Russia
and Belarus reaffirmed their commitment to closer integration under a
union treaty that has developed slowly since it was created nearly
seven years ago.
(AP, 1/20/03)
2003 Jan 20, Milan Milutinovic,
Serbia's former president, surrendered to the Yugoslav war crimes
tribunal to face charges that he was complicit in a crackdown on ethnic
Albanians.
(AP, 1/20/03)
2003 Jan 20, A powerful earthquake
hit the Solomon Islands, causing residents to flee homes and buildings.
(AP, 1/20/03)
2003 Jan 20, In South Africa an
execution-style attack at a Cape Town house used as a gay massage
parlor killed eight men and badly wounded two.
(AP, 1/20/03)
2003 Jan 21, The US Census Bureau
reported that Hispanics had passed Blacks as the biggest US minority
group.
(WSJ, 1/22/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 21, Thousands of British
firefighters walked off the job for the third time in less than three
months after failing to resolve a wage dispute with the government.
(AP, 1/21/03)
2003 Jan 21, Colombian rebels in
Arauca state kidnapped an American photographer and a British reporter,
the first time foreign journalists were abducted in Colombia's
four-decade-long civil war. Scott Dalton and Ruth Morris were freed Feb
1.
(AP, 2/1/03)(AP, 1/21/04)
2003 Jan 21, Congo's health
minister reported that a flu epidemic had killed more than 2,000 people
in a far northern province.
(AP, 1/21/03)
2003 Jan 21, Israel razed 62 shops
and market stalls in a Palestinian village Tuesday as troops clashed
with protesters.
(AP, 1/21/03)
2003 Jan 21, In Kuwait American
contract worker Michael Rene Pouliat (46) was killed by gunman in an
ambush near Camp Doha. Another worker was wounded. Saudi border guards
arrested a Kuwaiti suspect the next day.
(SFC, 1/23/03, p.A11)
2003 Jan 21, Mexico appealed to
the World Court to stop the execution of 51 of its citizens in the
United States.
(AP, 1/21/03)
2003 Jan 21, A 7.6-7.8 earthquake
ripped through western and central Mexico, killing at least 29 people
and leaving 10,000 homeless.
(SFC, 1/23/03, p.A1)(AP, 1/21/04)
2003 Jan 21, NATO blocked a US
request to begin preparations for a military backup in the event of war
with Iraq.
(WSJ, 1/23/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 21, In Uzbekistan a
series of stories posted on the Internet in early Jan before access was
cut off have alleged high-level corruption and the president's imminent
resignation, stirring rare public debate.
(AP, 1/21/03)
2003 Jan 22, Opponents and
supporters of abortion rights rallied on the 30th anniversary of the
Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling.
(AP, 1/22/04)
2003 Jan 22, Maryland's new
governor, Robert Ehrlich, declared an end to a moratorium on executions
instituted by Gov. Glendening.
(WSJ, 1/23/03, p.A1)(SFC, 1/31/03, p.A9)
2003 Jan 22, Bill Maudlin
(b.1921), WW-II era cartoonist, died in Newport Beach, Ca. In 1945 he
won a Pulitzer Prize for his war cartoons and later authored "Up
Front," a collection of cartoons and an essay on war. In 2008 Todd
DePastino authored “”Bill Maudlin: A Life Up Front.”
(SFC, 1/23/03, p.A2)(WS, 2/22/08, p.W6)
2003 Jan 22, In Colombia ELN
rebels kidnapped Scott Dalton, photographer and native of Conroe,
Texas; and Ruth Morris, a British reporter in Arauca state. They were
released Feb 1.
(AP, 1/23/03)(AP, 2/1/03)
2003 Jan 22, France and Germany
joined forces to prevent any U.S.-led war on Iraq. Countering blunt
talk of war by the Bush administration, France and Germany defiantly
stated they were committed to a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis.
(Reuters, 1/22/03)(AP, 1/22/04)
2003 Jan 22, In the Netherlands
voters rejected an anti-immigration party and gave 44 seats to the
Christian Democrats and 42 to the Labor party.
(SFC, 1/23/03, p.A10)
2003 Jan 23, The US Senate
approved a $390 billion spending bill.
(AP, 1/23/03)
2003 Jan 23, Broadcom reported a
$2.2 billion loss for the year ending Dec 31, 2002, and CEO Henry
Nicholas III (42) announced his resignation.
(WSJ, 6/25/04,
p.A1)(www.forbes.com/2003/01/27/cz_sl_0127brcm.html)
2003 Jan 23, In Texas 2 military
helicopters collided and 4 marine reservists were killed.
(WSJ, 1/24/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 23, Actress Nell Carter
(54) died in Beverly Hills, Calif.
(AP, 1/24/04)
2003 Jan 23, In Porto Alegre,
Brazil, the 3rd World Social Forum began as anti-globalization
activists demonstrated at the start of the third annual summit on ways
to limit the excesses of global capitalism.
(AP, 1/23/03)
2003 Jan 23, South and North Korea
agreed to peacefully resolve the international standoff over North
Korea's nuclear programs after Cabinet-level talks.
(AP, 1/23/03)
2003 Jan 23, Hamas gunmen
opened fire on a vehicle south of the West Bank city of Hebron and
three Israelis were killed. Retaliatory raids wounded 6 in Gaza.
(AP, 1/23/03)(SFC, 1/24/03, p.A11)
2003 Jan 23, The government of
Kuwait said a Kuwaiti had confessed to the Jan. 21 shootings of two
U.S. defense workers in Kuwait.
(AP, 1/24/04)
2003 Jan 23, In northern Peru an
explosion leveled an ammunition depot at a military base, killing seven
people and injured 95.
(AP, 1/23/03)
2003 Jan 24, The US Department of
Homeland Security under Tom Ridge became the government's 15th Cabinet
department.
(AP, 1/24/03)
2003 Jan 24, The Bush
administration's smallpox vaccine program was launched in Connecticut
with 4 doctors getting shots.
(SFC, 1/25/03, p.A4)(WSJ, 1/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 24, American warplanes
bombed an Iraqi air defense site, the 12th strike in the southern
flight interdiction zone this month.
(AP, 1/24/03)
2003 Jan 24, The IMF approved a
$6.78 billion land package to Argentina.
(SFC, 1/25/03, p.A5)
2003 Jan 24, Czech lawmakers
failed for a 2nd time to pick a successor to pres. Havel.
(WSJ, 1/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 24, In Prague, former
Communist Interior Minister Jaromir Obzina (73) died of cancer. In 2001
Obzina was charged with abuse of power for his role in an operation
aimed to crush political dissent between 1978 and 1984. The "Asanace"
(Sanitation) program focused on some 50 dissidents, signatories of the
Charter 77 human rights manifesto, resorting to threats and harsh
interrogations to intimidate them and force them to leave the country.
(AP, 1/29/03)
2003 Jan 24, In Haiti thousands of
business leaders, taxi drivers and doctors held a general strike,
clamoring for a better life in the poor nation.
(AP, 1/24/03)
2003 Jan 24, Israeli soldiers
killed at least 12 Palestinians as helicopter gunships hit Gaza City
with 11 missiles.
(SFC, 1/25/03, p.A5)(SSFC, 1/26/03, p.A16)
2003 Jan 24, Giovanni Agnelli
(81), the patriarch of the Fiat auto company, died in Turin after a
months-long illness.
(AP, 1/24/03)
2003 Jan 24, Ivory Coast
negotiators, trying to end a four-month-old civil war, reached a draft
peace settlement.
(AP, 1/24/03)
2003 Jan 24, A plane carrying
members of Kenya's new government crashed, killing one minister, two
pilots and injuring at least three other members of the government.
(AP, 1/24/03)
2003 Jan 24, In Spain police
arrested 16 suspected al-Qaida terrorists.
(AP, 1/24/03)
2003 Jan 25, The Sundance Film
Festival in Utah gave the grand jury prize to "American Splendor" and
the documentary grand prize to "Capturing the Friedmans." The audience
award went to "The Station Agent."
(SSFC, 1/26/03, p.A2)
2003 Jan 25, A computer worm
slowed Internet traffic. The "slammer" virus sought vulnerable
Microsoft "SQL Server 2000" software.
(SSFC, 1/26/03, p.A3)(WSJ, 1/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 25, NASA launched a
spacecraft into orbit to measure all the radiation streaming toward
Earth from the sun. The small satellite is called Sorce — for Solar
Radiation and Climate Experiment.
(AP, 1/25/04)
2003 Jan 25, Ivory Coast Pres.
Laurent Gbagbo accepted a peace plan to end the 4-month civil war.
Former PM Seydou Diarra would lead until new elections.
(SSFC, 1/26/03, p.A14)(WSJ, 1/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 25, In Nepal suspected
Maoist rebels gunned down police chief Krishna Mohan Shrestha along
with his wife and bodyguard.
(SSFC, 1/26/03, p.A14)
2003 Jan 25, Pakistan marked its
entry into the space age when its first communication satellite,
PAKSAT-I, formally began operations.
(AP, 1/25/03)
2003 Jan 25, In Venezuela
opponents of Pres. Hugo Chavez launched a 24-hour street demonstration
to protest a court ruling that postponed a referendum on Chavez's rule.
(AP, 1/25/03)
2003 Jan 26, Tampa Bay won their
first NFL championship over the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl 37.
Rioting erupted on Oakland streets following the Raiders' Super Bowl
loss to the Tampa Bucs (48-21).
(SFC, 1/27/03, p.A1)(AP, 1/26/04)
2003 Jan 26, Secretary of State
Colin Powell, citing Iraq's lack of cooperation with U.N. inspectors,
said he'd lost faith in the inspectors' ability to conduct a definitive
search for banned weapons programs.
(AP, 1/26/04)
2003 Jan 26, Bill Gates announced
that his charitable foundation will spend $200 million for medical
research in poor and undeveloped countries.
(SFC, 1/27/03, p.A3)
2003 Jan 26, In Cameroon an
overcrowded bus swerved into oncoming traffic on the nation's main
highway, sparking a five-car pileup that killed at least 70.
(AP, 1/28/03)
2003 Jan 26, In England historian
Hugh Trevor-Roper (b.1914) died. His books included "The Last Days of
Hitler" (1947), "The Rise of Christian Europe" (1965), and "The
European Witch Craze of the 16th and 17th Centuries." His final work
“The Invention of Scotland” was published posthumously in 2008.
(SFC, 1/27/03, p.B4)(WSJ, 7/26/08, p.W8)
2003 Jan 26, Annamarie Schimmel
(80), a professor emeritus of Islamic studies at Harvard University who
also lectured in Germany and Turkey, publishing more than 100 books
died in Bonn.
(AP, 2/2/03)
2003 Jan 26, In Guatemala a
security guard opened fire with a shotgun at thousands of people
gathered for a political convention of the National Union of Hope
party. Isaias Caal Ichich wounded 5 people.
(AP, 1/27/03)
2003 Jan 26, In Ivory Coast
loyalists, enraged by a peace deal with rebels, attacked the French
Embassy and army base.
(SFC, 1/27/03, p.A5)
2003 Jan 27, The Bush
administration moved toward a military showdown with Iraq and suggested
a decision could come as early as next week after UN inspectors
credited Iraq with only limited cooperation in the search for weapons.
Meanwhile, chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix charged that Iraq had never
genuinely accepted U.N. resolutions demanding its disarmament and
warned that "cooperation on substance" was necessary for a peaceful
solution.
(AP, 1/27/03)(SFC, 1/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 27, In Florida over 800
doctors staged a brief walkout to protest rising malpractice insurance
costs.
(WSJ, 1/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 27, A head-on train
collision between French and Italian passenger trains killed two
people. It appeared to be the result of human error.
(AP, 1/28/03)
2003 Jan 27, India and Pakistan
resumed shelling along the Kashmir border, and New Delhi warned
Pakistan it would be "erased from the world map" if Islamabad used
nuclear weapons against India.
(AP, 1/28/03)
2003 Jan 28, Pres. Bush in his
State of the Union vowed to use the "full force and might of the U.S.
military" if needed to disarm Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Bush pledged of
$15 billion for AIDS assistance in Africa, a domestic agenda of tax
cuts, medical malpractice caps and a ban on certain late abortions.
Bush also announced a $1.2 billion hydrogen fuel initiative.
(www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030206-2.html)(AP,
1/29/03)(WSJ, 1/29/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 28, Oregon voters
defeated a proposed 3-year income tax hike designed to forestall $310
million in cuts to schools and social services.
(SFC, 1/29/03, p.A3)
2003 Jan 28, John Philip Thompson
(77) died. He expanded his family's business into the nationwide
7-Eleven chain.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2003 Jan 28, US and Afghan forces
battled rebels aligned with renegade leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the
largest-scale fighting in 10 months. 18 enemy fighters were killed in 2
days of fighting. Norwegian F-16s participated in bombing enemy targets.
(AP, 1/28/03)(WSJ, 1/29/03, p.A1)(SFC, 1/29/03, p.A8)
2003 Jan 28, A Chinese company
began distributing generic drugs for an anti-AIDS cocktail.
(SFC, 1/29/03, p.A5)
2003 Jan 28, In eastern India a
passenger bus caught fire after colliding with a truck carrying paint
in dense fog, killing at least 42 people and injuring 13 others.
(AP, 1/28/03)
2003 Jan 28, An explosion leveled
a Gaza City house, killing three Palestinians, including a teenage
brother and sister, and wounding 11. In Jenin four Palestinians were
killed in battles with Israeli troops.
(AP, 1/28/03)
2003 Jan 28, In Israel PM Ariel
Sharon's Likud won with 38 seats, but still needed coalition partners
to reach a 61-spot majority in the 120-seat parliament.
(AP, 1/29/03)(AP, 2/4/03)
2003 Jan 28, Ivory Coast's army
said it opposed a new peace deal with rebel forces. Ethnic fighting
flared amid violent protests over the proposed peace accord. A 4th day
of ethnic clashes reportedly killed 10 people.
(AP, 1/28/03)(AP, 1/29/03)
2003 Jan 28, Mauritania, an
Arab-dominated West African nation, banned anti-U.S. protests and
deployed hundreds of security forces in the capital to enforce the
prohibition.
(AP, 1/29/03)
2003 Jan 28, In Mexico, gunmen in
San Juan Chamula ambushed police trying to arrest murder suspects,
sparking a gunbattle that left 5 people dead.
(AP, 1/28/03)
2003 Jan 28, Rwanda began
releasing 19,000 genocide suspects and former rebels in an effort to
ease intense overcrowding in the country's prisons and foster national
reconciliation.
(AP, 1/28/03)
2003 Jan 28, In Sweden Keith
Jarrett was named winner of the $117,000 Polar Music Prize, founded in
1989 by Stig Anderson, manager of ABBA.
(SFC, 1/29/03, p.D8)
2003 Jan 29, The Congressional
Budget Office predicted the current year's federal deficit would soar
to $199 billion even without President Bush's new tax cut plan or war
against Iraq.
(AP, 1/29/04)
2003 Jan 29, AOL Time Warner
posted a record $98.7 billion loss, the biggest in corporate history.
It included a $45.5 billion write down on the value of AOL.
(SFC, 1/30/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R8)
2003 Jan 29, In Kinston, NC, 6
people were killed and dozens injured in an explosion at West
Pharmaceuticals.
(SFC, 1/30/03, p.A3)(WSJ, 1/31/03, p.A1)(AP, 1/29/04)
2003 Jan 29, Leslie Fiedler (85),
author and literary critic, died in Buffalo, NY. His 1960 "Love and
Death in the American Novel" analyzed the work of mark Twain, Ernest
Hemingway and others.
(SFC, 1/31/03, p.A26)
2003 Jan 29, Frank Moss (b.1911),
liberal Utah Democratic Senator (1958-1976), died. His efforts included
the addition of Capitol Reef and Canyonlands to the national park
system.
(SFC, 2/3/03, p.B4)
2003 Jan 29, Britain, the Czech
Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, signed
an open letter calling on the peace camp, implicitly Germany, France
and Russia, to rally to the U.S. standard against Iraq.
(WSJ, 1/30/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 29, The body of
Abdelmalek Benbara (41), a member of the Algerian prime minister's
party reported missing Jan 17, was found in a car in Paris.
(AP, 1/30/03)
2003 Jan 29, Belgium said oil
leaking from the sunken cargo ship Tricolor (Dec 14) is washing up on
the Belgian coastline, damaging wildlife and beaches.
(AP, 1/30/03)
2003 Jan 29, In Cambodia
protesters looted and set fire to the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh. The
protest was against a Thai TV star who was quoted in the media as
saying Cambodia had stolen the famous Angkor Wat temple from Thailand.
(AP, 1/29/03)
2003 Jan 29, Iraq responded to
chief inspector Hans Blix's tough assessment of its disarmament,
accusing him of misrepresenting its record of compliance, offering some
new information and pledging continued cooperation.
(AP, 1/30/03)
2003 Jan 29, Montenegro lawmakers
voted to abolish Yugoslavia and replace it with a loose union of
semi-independent states called Serbia and Montenegro.
(SFC, 1/30/03, p.A8)
2003 Jan 29, Russia's Border Guard
Service said the US led anti-terror operation in Afghanistan has done
nothing to reduce the flow of illegal drugs from that country.
(AP, 1/29/03)
2003 Jan 30, President Bush put
allies on notice that diplomacy would give way to a decision on war
with Iraq in "weeks, not months." Wary world leaders and congressional
critics urged patience and demanded proof of Iraq's transgressions.
(AP, 1/30/04)
2003 Jan 30, Spencer Abraham, US
Energy Secretary, said the US would rejoin the $5 billion int'l.
project to build an experimental fusion reactor. The US had left the
project in 1998.
(SFC, 1/31/03, p.A6)
2003 Jan 30, John Snow won
confirmation as US Treasury secretary.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R8)
2003 Jan 30, Richard Reid, the
British citizen and al-Qaida follower who'd tried to blow up a
trans-Atlantic jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoes, was
sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge in Boston.
(AP, 1/30/04)
2003 Jan 30, In Afghanistan 4
American soldiers were killed when special operations UH-60 Black Hawk
helicopter went down seven miles east of the Bagram Air Base while on a
training mission.
(AP, 1/31/03)(SFC, 1/31/03, p.A11)
2003 Jan 30, Belgium officially
recognized gay marriages.
(SFC, 1/31/03, p.A9)
2003 Jan 30, Brazil's President
Lula da Silva launched his anti-hunger program with a move to provide
$14 a month to 1.5 million families, most from the country's
poverty-stricken northeast.
(AP, 1/30/03)
2003 Jan 30, An Israeli undercover
unit shot dead two Palestinian militants in Tulkarem, including a
militia leader. Army bulldozers demolished a Palestinian vegetable
market and closed Palestinian police and TV stations in Hebron.
(AP, 1/30/03)
2003 Jan 30, Italian police
arrested 28 Pakistanis during a routine sweep for illegal immigrants.
The arrested possessed explosives, hundreds of forged documents and
maps of the Naples area with "sensitive" targets circled.
(AP, 1/31/03)
2003 Jan 30, Sweden said it will
contribute $5.9 million to help Afghanistan repay debts to the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
(AP, 1/30/03)
2003 Jan 30, Thailand sealed its
border with Cambodia, recalled its ambassador and sent military planes
to evacuate hundreds of terrified Thais after rioters looted and
torched its embassy in the Cambodian capital.
(AP, 1/30/03)
2003 Jan 31, President Bush and
British PM Tony Blair met at the White House; Bush said he would
welcome a second UN resolution on Iraq but only if it led to the prompt
disarming of Saddam Hussein. Pushing for a new resolution, Blair called
confronting Iraq "a test of the international community." In 2006
British author Phillippe Sands said in a new edition of his 2005
”Lawless World” that Pres. Bush commented during the 2003 meeting with
Blair that the US intended to go to war even if inspectors failed to
find evidence of a banned weapons program.
(AP, 1/31/04)(AP, 2/3/06)
2003 Jan 31, A federal jury in SF
found Ed Rosenthal (58), a marijuana advocate, guilty of felony
conspiracy and cultivation charges. Judge Charles Breyer did not allow
testimony citing 1996 California state voter approval of medical
marijuana. On Feb 4 jurors claimed they were duped and called for a new
trial.
(SFC, 2/1/03, p.A1)(SFC, 2/5/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 31, In Afghanistan, a
bomb destroyed the Rambasi Bridge near Kandahar, and killed at least 15
people traveling by bus. Police blamed Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives.
(AP, 1/31/03)(SFC, 1/31/03, p.A11)
2003 Jan 31, In Australia a
commuter train derailed south of Sydney and 9 people were killed.
(AP, 1/31/03)
2003 Jan 31, Top UN arms
inspectors said they would not agree to new talks in Baghdad unless
Iraq demonstrated more cooperation and met unspecified conditions.
(AP, 1/31/03)
2003 Jan 31, Israeli undercover
troops killed a fugitive Islamic militant and a Palestinian night
watchman in a two-hour gun battle at a Jenin firehouse.
(AP, 1/31/03)(SFC, 2/1/03, p.A11)
2003 Jan 31, In Mexico City tens
of thousands of farmers clogged main streets, demanding greater
protection against U.S. imports and seeking more government aid.
(AP, 1/31/03)
2003 Jan 31, A Russian cargo plane
crashed while landing in fog near an airport on East Timor's north
coast, killing all six people aboard.
(AP, 1/31/03)
2003 Jan, Pres. Bush received
classified reports from the National Intelligence Council that an
American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political
Islam and result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent
internal conflict.
(SFC, 9/28/04, p.A3)
2003 Jan, In Chechnya 3
construction workers were killed at a checkpoint. In Dec 2007 two
Russian officers were convicted by a military court of killing the 3
workers.
(AP, 12/28/07)
2003 Jan, China ended a "100-day
campaign" to hunt down North Korean refugees. 3,200 were deported and
another 1,300 awaited deportation. A Christian sponsored underground
railroad reportedly helped some 300,000 North Koreans escape their
homeland.
(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A14)
2003 Jan, Eifuku, a $300 million
Tokyo-based hedge fund, collapsed. George Soros was believed to have
$180 million in the fund.
(WSJ, 1/30/03, p.C1)
2003 Jan, In Baghdad, Iraq, Hayder
Mounthir staged his play "Where Is the Government." The entire cast was
briefly jailed after one performance. He re-staged the play at the
National Theater with a new ending in Nov.
(WSJ, 11/10/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 1, Space shuttle Columbia
broke apart in flames over Texas, killing all 7 astronauts just 16
minutes before they were supposed to glide to ground in Florida. The
astronauts included Michael P. Anderson (b.1959), David M. Brown
(b.1956), Laurel Clark (b.1962), Kalpana Chawla (b.1962), Rick Husband
(b.1957), William C. McCool (b.1961) and Ilan Ramon (b.1954). An
explosion in the wheel well under the left wing was later suspected as
the cause.
(AP, 2/1/03)(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.A8)(WSJ, 2/14/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 1, Former Agriculture
Secretary Richard Lyng died in Modesto, Calif., at age 84.
(AP, 2/1/04)
2003 Feb 1, In western
Canada 7 people were killed in the 2nd fatal avalanche to strike in
less than two weeks.
(Reuters, 2/1/03)
2003 Feb 1, The Lunar Chinese New
Year 4701, the Year of the Ram, began.
(SFC, 1/31/03, p.A23)
2003 Feb 1, In Colombia leftist
guerrillas freed an American photographer and a British reporter.
(AP, 2/1/03)
2003 Feb 1, Mongo Santamaria
(81/85), Cuban-born Latin jazzman, died in Miami.
(WSJ, 2/3/03, p.A1)(SFC, 2/5/03, p.A22)(SSFC,
12/28/03, p.E4)
2003 Feb 1, Across France at least
150,000 people, some braving snow, poured into the streets to protest
government plans to reform the country's generous, but overburdened,
pension system.
(AP, 2/1/03)
2003 Feb 1, In northern Ireland a
protestant paramilitary commander and his friend were gunned down
because of an apparent feud within his outlawed group.
(AP, 2/2/03)
2003 Feb 1, In Ivory Coast nearly
100,000 loyalists marched through Abidjan, burning French flags and
calling for the death of the French president in the biggest protest
yet against a French-brokered peace deal.
(AP, 2/2/03)
2003 Feb 1, In Liberia fighting
between government and rebel forces raged within 60 miles of Monrovia.
(AP, 2/1/03)
2003 Feb 1, In northwestern
Zimbabwe a crowded passenger train and a freight train with flammable
liquid collided, killed at least 50 people and injured about 40.
(AP, 2/3/03)(AP, 2/1/08)
2003 Feb 2, The search continued
for pieces of the space shuttle Columbia, a day after the spacecraft
disintegrated during re-entry over Texas, killing all seven astronauts.
(AP, 2/2/08)
2003 Feb 2, Lou Harrison (85), US
composer, died. His work melded Asian and Western styles.
(SFC, 2/4/03, p.A19)
2003 Feb 2, Australia's first
cloned sheep, Matilda (b. Apr, 2000) died unexpectedly of unknown
causes.
(AP, 2/7/03)
2003 Feb 2, Chechen rebel attacks
and mines killed 5 Russian servicemen and wounded 8.
(AP, 2/3/03)
2003 Feb 2, In northeastern China,
fire tore through the Tiantan Hotel Harbin, killing 33 people at the
start of Chinese New Year.
(AP, 2/2/03)
2003 Feb 2, A tornado tore through
remote villages in Bandundu province in central Congo, killing 164
people, destroying homes and ruining crops.
(AP, 2/6/03)
2003 Feb 2, Vaclav Havel stepped
down after 13 years as president of the Czech Republic.
(AP, 2/2/03)
2003 Feb 2, Indonesian police
arrested Mas Selamat bin Kastari, a major terrorist suspect, on the
island of Bintang.
(SFC, 2/4/03, p.A9)
2003 Feb 2, In Kazakhstan Progress
M-47 lifted off atop a Soyuz-U rocket to deliver supplies to the int'l.
space station.
(SFC, 2/3/03, p.A5)
2003 Feb 2, In Nigeria a powerful
explosion destroyed a bank and dozens of apartments above it on Lagos
Island, and relief workers reported at least 46 killed and many more
trapped.
(AP, 2/2/03)(AP, 2/3/04)
2003 Feb 2, In the Philippines a
two-hour gunbattle involving about 70 New People's Army rebels killed
two soldiers and five rebels near the town of Baganga in the southern
Davao Oriental province.
(AP, 2/2/03)
2003 Feb 3, Pres. Bush set forth a
$2.2 trillion budget and acknowledged that it would contribute to years
of deficits.
(SFC, 2/4/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 3, It was reported that
the US and Britain had mapped out a strategy to limit arms inspections
in Iraq to no more than 6 more weeks.
(SFC, 2/3/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 3, Phil Spector (62),
rock-n-roll producer, was arrested in LA for murder after Lana Clarkson
(40) was found dead in his mansion. In 2007 his murder case ended in a
mistrial with a 10-2 deadlock.
(SFC, 2/4/03, p.A1)(SFC, 9/27/07, p.A2)
2003 Feb 3, New Jersey doctors
joined the protest against high malpractice insurance premiums.
(WSJ, 2/4/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 3, A new British report
said Iraqi security agents have bugged every room and telephone of the
UN weapons inspectors based in Baghdad and have hidden documents in
Iraqi hospitals, mosques and homes.
(AP, 2/4/03)
2003 Feb 3, In England Margaret
Muller, an American artist, was stabbed to death as she ran in London’s
Victoria Park. In 2009 The Metropolitan Police said that a 36-year-old
man had been arrested on suspicion of the murder and was in custody
north of London.
(AP, 2/4/09)
2003 Feb 3, Germany began its
first working day as president of the UN Security Council.
(AP, 2/4/03)
2003 Feb 3, Israeli tank fire
killed two Palestinian farmers in the Gaza Strip on Monday, and
soldiers arrested a leader of Yasser Arafat's Fatah group on the West
Bank.
(AP, 2/3/03)
2003 Feb 3, The Peace Corps
resumed work in Peru, nearly three decades after a leftist military
government ended the American volunteer program there.
(AP, 2/3/03)
2003 Feb 3, Venezuela's workers
returned to work in all sectors but the vital oil industry after
abandoning a two-month-long general strike that failed to oust
President Hugo Chavez.
(AP, 2/3/04)
2003 Feb 4, Pres. Bush visited the
Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he led a tribute to the lost
crew of the shuttle Columbia and rededicated the nation to space travel.
(AP, 2/4/04)
2003 Feb 4, Jerome Hines (81),
opera singer died in New York.
(AP, 2/4/04)
2003 Feb 4, Beauty pageant
organizers stripped Miss Brazil of her title after they discovered she
was married. Joseane Oliveira (21) was replaced by first runner-up
Taiza Thomsen (21).
(AP, 2/5/03)
2003 Feb 4, A rare television
interview with Saddam Hussein aired in which the Iraqi leader charged
that US claims of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in his
country were a pretext to seize Iraq's oil fields.
(AP, 2/4/04)
2003 Feb 4, In central Pakistan
fireworks being loaded into shipping containers caught fire, setting
off a series of powerful explosions that killed at least 17 people,
including two children, and injured dozens.
(AP, 2/4/03)
2003 Feb 4, The United Nations
indicted 32 people, including 15 Indonesian soldiers, on allegations
they tortured and killed East Timorese during the country's bloody
split from Indonesia in 1999.
(AP, 2/4/03)
2003 Feb 4, Venezuela's government
suggested a referendum on his rule later this year as a way out of the
country's political crisis.
(AP, 2/4/03)
2003 Feb 4, Yugoslavia's
parliament transformed the federation into a loose union between
Montenegro and Serbia and retired the name "Yugoslavia."
(WSJ, 2/5/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, Secretary of State
Colin Powell, made his case that Iraq had defied all demands that it
disarm, presented tape recordings, satellite photos and statements from
informants that he said was "irrefutable and undeniable" evidence that
Saddam Hussein is concealing weapons of mass destruction.
(AP, 2/5/03)(SFC, 2/6/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, Circuit city dismissed
some 3,900 highly paid commissioned salespeople to reduce company
expenses.
(WSJ, 6/11/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, It was reported that
genealogical research in Utah identified a gene that causes depression.
(WSJ, 2/5/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, The World Court ruled
that the United States must temporarily stay the execution of three
Mexican citizens on U.S. death rows.
(AP, 2/5/03)
2003 Feb 5, Larry LeSueur (93),
longtime CBS News radio reporter died in Washington.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2003 Feb 5, The Israeli military
demolished the home of a Palestinian militant in the Gaza Strip,
killing an elderly woman inside. Israeli troops killed a total of 5
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
(AP, 2/5/03)(WSJ, 2/7/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, North Korea said that
it had reactivated its nuclear facilities and is going ahead with their
operation "on a normal footing."
(AP, 2/5/03)
2003 Feb 5, Heavy rains in
northern Mozambique caused flooding that left about 100,000 families
homeless, swept away thousands of acres of crops and severely damaged
roads and bridges.
(AP, 2/6/03)
2003 Feb 6, Edging closer to war,
President Bush declared "the game is over" for Saddam Hussein and urged
skeptical allies to join in disarming Iraq.
(AP, 2/6/04)
2003 Feb 6, ABC's "20/20" aired a
British documentary on Michael Jackson in which the King of Pop
revealed he sometimes let children sleep in his bed.
(AP, 2/6/04)
2003 Feb 6, An inter-African
committee on female genital cutting called for an annual observance of
Feb. 6 as an international day of zero tolerance of the practice.
(AP, 2/6/03)
2003 Feb 6, Belgium asked the
European Union to call an emergency meeting to discuss a peaceful way
out of the Iraq crisis.
(AP, 2/6/03)
2003 Feb 6, Lord Aberconway (89),
a shipbuilding magnate born as Charles Melville McLaren, died in
London. He secretly met with Adolf Hitler's aide Hermann Goering weeks
before the German invasion of Poland. He inherited his title and the
chairmanship of the shipbuilding giant John Brown and the mining
company English China Clays when his father died in 1953.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2003 Feb 6, Medical experts headed
to northern Republic of Congo to investigate a feared outbreak of Ebola
after 16 suspicious deaths.
(AP, 2/6/03)
2003 Feb 6, Pre-emptive attacks on
North Korea's nuclear facilities would trigger a "total war," the
communist state warned after Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
labeled the North's government a "terrorist regime."
(AP, 2/6/03)
2003 Feb 6, Turkey's parliament
voted to allow U.S. troops to renovate Turkish bases for use in a
possible war with Iraq.
(AP, 2/6/03)
2003 Feb 7, President Bush courted
the leaders of France and China in an uphill struggle to win U.N.
backing for war with Iraq.
(AP, 2/7/04)
2003 Feb 7, The US moved its
terror alert status to orange, the 2nd highest level. Attorney General
John Ashcroft said the government had received intelligence
information, corroborated by multiple sources, that Osama bin Laden's
terror organization sought to attack Americans at home or abroad during
the annual hajj pilgrimage to the holy Saudi city of Mecca.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2003 Feb 7, Garry Kasparov (39),
chess master, played to a 3-3 tie against the Deep Junior computer
program.
(SFC, 2/8/03, p.A2)
2003 Feb 7, Tom Christerson (71),
the longest-living recipient of a fully self-contained artificial
heart, died at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Ky., after 512 days on
the AbioCor.
(AP, 2/7/04)
2003 Feb 7, Chechen rebel attacks
and land mines killed 10 soldiers and police over the last 24 hours.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2003 Feb 7, In Bogota, Colombia, a
car bomb tore through the El Nogal social club, killing 36 people,
wounding 162. FARC rebels were blamed.
(AP, 2/8/03)(SFC, 2/8/03, p.A12)(AP, 2/7/04)
2003 Feb 7, Three Tamil Tiger
rebels blew up their boat, killing themselves, after they were found
trying to smuggle an anti-aircraft gun and hundreds of rounds of
ammunition into Sri Lanka.
(AP, 2/7/03)
2003 Feb 8, In a jab at major US
allies, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a security conference
in Munich that countries such as France and Germany that favored giving
Iraq another chance to disarm were undermining what slim chance existed
to avoid war.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2003 Feb 8, The US Navy conducted
its last scheduled round of weapons tests on Vieques Island, Puerto
Rico.
(SFC, 2/10/03, p.A9)
2003 Feb 8, In Australia 750 nude
women formed a heart around the words 'No War' near the town of Byron
Bay to protest possible war with Iraq.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2003 Feb 8, Augusto Monterosso
(81), Honduras-born Guatemalan writer, died in Mexico City. His work
included "Perpetual Movement" (1972); "The Letter E: Fragments of a
Diary" (1987); and "The Magic Word" (1983).
(SFC, 2/10/03, p.B5)
2003 Feb 8, The chief UN arms
inspectors arrived in Baghdad for a new round of crucial talks with
Iraqi officials.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2003 Feb 8, In Iraq gunmen posing
as defectors from an Islamic extremist group killed Gen. Shawkat
Haji Mushir, a political leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and
two other Kurdish officials.
(AP, 2/9/03)
2003 Feb 8, Philippine troops
killed at least eight Abu Sayyaf rebels during a clash with the
guerrillas in the southern town of Patikul.
(AP, 2/9/03)
2003 Feb 8, Nearly 2 million
Muslims converged on Mecca for the annual pilgrimage. Some of the
faithful offered prayers to avert a U.S.-led war on Iraq.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2003 Feb 8, Tens of thousands of
Venezuelans marched in support of 9,000 oil workers fired for leading a
two-month strike against President Hugo Chavez that battered the
economy of this oil-dependent nation.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2003 Feb 9, The West beat the East
155-145 in the first double overtime game in NBA All-Star history.
(www.insidehoops.com/all-star-weekend-2003.shtml)
2003 Feb 9, President Bush told
congressional Republicans at a policy conference that Iraq had fooled
the world for more than a decade about its banned weapons and the
United Nations was now facing "a moment of truth" in disarming Saddam
Hussein.
(AP, 2/9/04)
2003 Feb 9, The U.S. Navy ended
its last planned bombing exercises on Puerto Rico's Vieques Island.
(AP, 2/9/04)
2003 Feb 9, In China state media
reported that scientists had discovered a massive underground lake,
some 35 billion cubic feet, in the arid northwest beneath the
Taklimakan desert.
(AP, 2/9/03)
2003 Feb 9, The leaders of Germany
and Russia renewed their calls for a peaceful resolution in Iraq,
restating their opposition to any U.S.-led war to disarm and oust
Saddam Hussein.
(AP, 2/9/04)
2003 Feb 9, Iran reported the
discovery of uranium reserves and planned production facilities for
peaceful use of nuclear energy.
(SFC, 2/10/03, p.A8)
2003 Feb 9, Montenegro's 2nd
attempt in 2 months to elect a president failed.
(AP, 2/10/03)
2003 Feb 9, Three Palestinians
were killed when their explosives-laden car blew up outside an Israeli
army post after crashing into a cement block barrier. In secret talks
last week Israel offered the Palestinians a gradual cease-fire.
(AP, 2/9/03)(SSFC, 2/9/03, p.A22)
2003 Feb 9, Swiss voters approved
measures to further extend their direct democracy.
(AP, 2/10/03)
2003 Feb 10, Clark MacGregor (80),
former Minnesota Congressman who'd led the Nixon re-election campaign
in 1972, died in Pompano Beach, Fla.
(AP, 2/10/04)
2003 Feb 10, Ron Ziegler (b.1939),
former press secretary for Richard Nixon, died in Coronado, Ca.
(SFC, 2/11/03, p.A19)
2003 Feb 10, Afghanistan became
the 89th nation to join the International Criminal Court.
(AP, 2/11/03)
2003 Feb 10, In Kabul,
Afghanistan, Germany and the Netherlands took control of the 22-nation
peacekeeping force charged with keeping order, replacing Turkey.
(AP, 2/10/03)
2003 Feb 10, A Chinese court
convicted U.S.-based dissident Wang Bingzhang on spying and terrorism
charges and sentenced him to life in prison.
(AP, 2/10/04)
2003 Feb 10, France, Germany and
Belgium blocked NATO efforts to begin planning for possible Iraqi
attacks against Turkey.
(AP, 2/10/03)
2003 Feb 10, 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.
(AP, 2/10/04)
2003 Feb 10, Israeli troops killed
2 suspected Palestinian militants, including an unarmed fugitive, in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
(AP, 2/10/03)
2003 Feb 10, Mexican army troops
seized 2.2 tons of cocaine from a plane that landed in northern Mexico
after it reported mechanical problems. The three men onboard were
arrested.
(AP, 2/11/03)
2003 Feb 10, Moscow appointed a
new prime minister of Chechnya. Anatoly Popov replaced Mikhail Babich,
who resigned under pressure 2 days earlier after a dispute with his
superior, the chief of the Moscow-backed administration, Akhmad Kadyrov.
(AP, 2/10/03)
2003 Feb 11, Federal Reserve
Chairman Alan Greenspan said that Pres. Bush's tax cut would increase
the federal budget deficits and voiced opposition.
(SFC, 2/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 11, Addressing a historic
rift within NATO, Secretary of State Colin Powell told a congressional
hearing the future of the military alliance was at risk if it failed to
confront the crisis with Iraq.
(AP, 2/11/04)
2003 Feb 11, The purported voice
of Osama bin Laden, broadcast over the Al Jazeera network, told his
followers to help Saddam Hussein fight Americans.
(AP, 2/12/03)
2003 Feb 11, A group of around 50
Western anti-war activists received visas to enter Iraq where they plan
to form "human shields." Iraq said it would allow U-2 surveillance
flights.
(Reuters, 2/11/03)(SFC, 2/11/03, p.A10)
2003 Feb 11, Afghan officials said
17 civilians were killed in American-led bombing over the last 2 days.
(SFC, 2/12/03, p.A8)
2003 Feb 11, From China it was
reported that an unidentified illness, 1st noted in Nov., has killed at
least five people in Guangdong province, left hundreds hospitalized and
sent health officials scrambling to find its source.
(AP, 2/11/03)
2003 Feb 11, In China Ma Sanli
(b.1914), a master performer of the traditional Chinese art of
crosstalk, a rhythmic, often humorous mix of dialogue and storytelling,
died.
(AP, 2/11/03)
2003 Feb 11, The private plane
carrying Colombian Minister of Social Welfare, Juan Luis Londono, was
found crashed in the mountains north of the town of Cajamarca, 85 miles
west of Bogota. It had disappeared 5 days earlier.
(AP, 2/11/03)
2003 Feb 11, Israeli troops killed
an armed Palestinian in the Gaza Strip, and Israel imposed a blanket
closure on the Palestinian areas during the Muslim Hajj because of
warnings of possible attacks. Israeli soldiers killed an 8-year-old boy
in the West Bank and an Israeli was killed by a Palestinian gunman in
Bethlehem.
(AP, 2/11/03)(SFC, 2/12/03, p.A13)
2003 Feb 11, In Paraguay Pres.
Luis Gonzalez Macchi survived an impeachment trial as the Senate failed
to muster enough votes to strip him from power over corruption charges.
(AP, 2/12/03)
2003 Feb 11, In Mina, Saudi
Arabia, 14 Muslim pilgrims were trampled to death when some worshippers
tripped amid a jostling crowd during the devil-stoning ritual of the
annual Hajj pilgrimage.
(AP, 2/11/03)(SFC, 2/12/03, p.A9)
2003 Feb 12, Kemmons Wilson (90),
founder of the Holiday Inn chain, died in Memphis, Tenn.
(WSJ, 2/13/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 12, In Bolivia angry
civilians joined striking police officers in a protest that degenerated
into riots, leaving at least 17 people dead and Bolivian government
buildings in flames.
(AP, 2/13/03)(SFC, 2/12/03, p.A9)
2003 Feb 12, In Sao Paulo, Brazil,
Bishop Paulo Pereira (38) of the Vetero Catholic Church, in the
low-income district of Guainazes, was gunned down inside his church's
headquarters. Elsewhere in San Paulo 3 gunmen killed Wallace Ornelas
Passos, a 17-year-old student with a police record for theft and other
criminal activities.
(AP, 2/13/03)
2003 Feb 12, A bloody prison riot
near Guatemala City left at least 6 inmates dead, and a man convicted
in the high-profile murder case of Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi
was among the dead.
(AP, 2/13/03)
2003 Feb 12, The Republic of Congo
reported that an Ebola outbreak was suspected in the recent deaths of
48 people.
(SFC, 2/13/03, p.A7)
2003 Feb 12, India conducted its
fourth missile test of 2003, firing a supersonic cruise missile capable
of hitting major cities in Pakistan.
(AP, 2/12/04)
2003 Feb 12, The UN nuclear agency
declared North Korea in violation of international treaties, sending
the dispute to the Security Council.
(AP, 2/12/04)
2003 Feb 13, American Special
Forces were reported to be in various parts of Iraq for what seemed to
be the initial phases of a ground war.
(SFC, 2/13/03, p.A14)
2003 Feb 13, Clara Harris, who'd
run down her cheating husband with her Mercedes after catching him with
his mistress, was convicted by a Houston jury of murder despite her
claim that she'd hit him accidentally while in a heartsick daze. She
was later sentenced to 20 years in prison.
(AP, 2/13/04)
2003 Feb 13, Smith & Wesson
unveiled a new Model 500, .50 caliber Magnum revolver.
(SFC, 2/14/03, p.A2)
2003 Feb 13, An investigative
panel found that superheated air almost certainly seeped through a
breach in space shuttle Columbia's left wing and possibly its wheel
compartment during the craft's fiery descent, resulting in the deaths
of all seven astronauts.
(AP, 2/13/04)
2003 Feb 13, Prof. Walt W. Rostow
(b.1916), adviser to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, died in
Austin, Texas. His over 30 books included "Theorists of Economic Growth
from David Hume to the Present, with a Perspective on the Next Century"
(1990), and "The Stages of Economic Growth" (3rd ed. 1990). His memoir
“Concept and Controversy” (2003) was published posthumously. In 2008
David Milne authored “America’s Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam
War.”
(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A24)(WSJ, 3/6/08, p.D7)
2003 Feb 13, In southern Colombia
a U.S. government plane carrying 5 people crashed short of an airport
in rebel territory, and those on board may have been spirited away by
leftist rebels. 2 days later an American and a Colombian were executed
at close range.
(AP, 2/13/03)(AP, 2/15/03)
2003 Feb 14, Dolly (b.1996), the
world's 1st clone sheep and mother of 6 lambs, was put to sleep by
veterinarians in Scotland after they failed to cure her of a severe
lung infection.
(AP, 2/15/03)(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A2)
2003 Feb 14, In Brazil police
found the bullet-riddled bodies of six men in the back seat and trunk
of a car parked near a Rio de Janeiro slum.
(AP, 2/14/03)
2003 Feb 14, In Colombia a massive
explosion rocked the southern city of Neiva as police searched a house
for explosives. 15 people died and about 30 were wounded.
(AP, 2/14/03)
2003 Feb 14, Saddam Hussein banned
all weapons of mass destruction from Iraq, meeting a long time UN
demand.
(AP, 2/14/03)
2003 Feb 14, Major powers rebuffed
the United States in the U.N. Security Council and insisted on more
time for weapons inspections in Iraq. Earlier, chief U.N. weapons
inspector Hans Blix told the Council his teams had not found any
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A1)(AP, 2/14/04)
2003 Feb 14, President Kim
Dae-jung said South Korea's government helped arrange a $200 million
payment to North Korea before a summit in 2000.
(AP, 2/14/03)
2003 Feb 14, Popocatepetl volcano
southeast of Mexico City erupted but caused no significant damage.
(AP, 2/14/03)
2003 Feb 14, Russian lawmakers
were expected to pass bills paving the way for the break-up of its
electricity monopoly, the Unified Energy System (RAO).
(WSJ, 2/13/03, p.A10)
2003 Feb 14, A Thai court ruled to
extradite Florida millionaire James Vincent Sullivan (61), wanted in
the US for the 1987 murder of his socialite wife. He was accused of
paying another man $25,000 to kill Lita McClinton Sullivan to avoid
losing property in a divorce. In 2006 he was convicted of murder and
sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 2/15/03)(AP, 3/14/06)
2003 Feb 14, Trinidad and Tobago
legislators elected Maxwell Richards, a former university dean who
claims he is "not in anyone's back pocket" to be the new president.
(AP, 2/14/03)
2003 Feb 14, In Zimbabwe 2
Valentine's Day peace parades by women clutching roses and singing
hymns were broken up by baton-wielding police who arrested at least 88
people as well as eight journalists.
(AP, 2/14/03)
2003 Feb 15, Millions of
protesters, many of them marching in the capitals of America's allies,
demonstrated against possible US plans to attack Iraq.
(AP, 2/16/03)
2003 Feb 15, Tens of
thousands of people gathered in downtown Sydney and around Australia to
protest possible war with Iraq and their country's involvement.
(AP, 2/16/03)
2003 Feb 15, Tens of
thousands of New Zealanders demonstrated against a war in Iraq.
(AP, 2/16/03)
2003 Feb 15, Rattled by an
outpouring of anti-war sentiment, the US and Britain began reworking a
draft resolution to authorize force against Saddam Hussein.
(AP, 2/15/03)
2003 Feb 15, American
warplanes bombed two anti-aircraft missile sites in southern Iraq.
(AP, 2/15/03)
2003 Feb 15, Anti-war
protests drew hundreds of thousands of people in cities around the
world.
(AP, 2/15/03)
2003 Feb 15, It was
reported that 11 million Ethiopians face famine due to drought
affecting 15% of the nation's harvest.
(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A12)
2003 Feb 15, A roadside
bomb exploded next to an Israeli tank in the Gaza Strip, killing all
four soldiers inside. Hamas claimed responsibility.
(AP, 2/15/03)(SSFC, 2/16/03, p.A10)
2003 Feb 15, In India 7 men
from Hindu upper castes were killed at a roadside restaurant the
crime-prone Bihar state. The upper-caste men were apparently killed to
avenge the killings 2 days earlier of 7 lower-caste Dalits.
(AP, 2/16/03)
2003 Feb 15, Nigerian oil
workers launched an indefinite strike that could shut down crude
exports in the world's 6th largest oil exporter.
(AP, 2/15/03)
2003 Feb 16, Michael Waltrip raced
past leader Jimmie Johnson to win the rain-shortened Daytona 500 for
the second time in three years.
(AP, 2/16/04)
2003 Feb 16, The SF
anti-war demonstration cost organizers some $85,000. An estimated
200,000 people participated. Some 1000 protesters clashed with police
at the end of the rally and 46 people were arrested. A later aerial
study numbered the crowd at 65,000.
(SFC, 2/17/03, p.A1)(SFC, 2/21/03, A1)
2003 Feb 16, Eleanor "Sis" Daley
(95), the matriarch of Chicago's Daley political clan, died.
(AP, 2/16/04)
2003 Feb 16, In Australia
PM John Howard said he respects the views of hundreds of thousands of
citizens who took part in peace protests over the weekend but would not
be swayed by their opposition to war with Iraq.
(AP, 2/17/03)
2003 Feb 16, In Belgium
thieves over the weekend emptied more than 100 vaults at a diamond
trading center in what officials said might be the largest theft ever
in Antwerp.
(AP, 2/18/03)
2003 Feb 16, In Cyprus
Tassos Papadopoulos was elected the country's 5th president over
Glafcos Clerides. He opposed current reunification plans.
(AP, 2/17/03)(WSJ, 2/18/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 16, Yasser Arafat
affirmed in a letter to Britain's Tony Blair that he will honor a
pledge to appoint a prime minister. 8 Palestinians were killed, 6 in a
mysterious explosion in Gaza City and 2 by Israeli army fire in the
West Bank.
(AP, 2/16/03)(SFC, 2/17/03, A3)
2003 Feb 16, French
President Jacques Chirac said in a published interview that the massive
US military deployment in the Persian Gulf has made it possible to
peacefully disarm Iraq.
(AP, 2/16/03)
2003 Feb 16, The Israeli
Cabinet voted to allow about 17,000 Ethiopians with Jewish roots to
come to Israel, lifting immigration restrictions on the group known as
Falash Mura.
(AP, 2/16/03)
2003 Feb 16, In Mexico's
central Mexico state voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum in
support of executing kidnappers, armed robbers and murderers.
(AP, 2/17/03)
2003 Feb 16, The 19-member
NATO alliance turned to its Defense Planning Committee, which Paris
withdrew from in 1966, to negotiate an end to the month-long NATO
deadlock over Iraq. NATO agreed to supply Turkey with defense equipment
in the event of war with Iraq.
(AP, 2/16/03)(SFC, 2/17/03, A1)
2003 Feb 16, A Syrian
military truck carrying diesel fuel overturned and caught fire at a
Lebanese-Syrian border crossing, killing at least 17 people.
(AP, 2/16/03)
2003 Feb 17, An estimated 40
million viewers tuned in to the finale of Fox's reality show "Joe
Millionaire," in which Evan Marriott chose Zora Andrich.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2003 Feb 17, A blizzard
shut down much of the mid-Atlantic region on Presidents Day with
windblown snow up to 4 feet deep, halting air and some rail travel and
caused at lest 40 deaths.
(AP, 2/17/03)(SFC, 2/18/03, A1)(SFC, 2/19/03, A3)
2003 Feb 17, In Chicago 21
people were killed at the E2 nightclub in an early morning stampede
after security guards used mace and pepper spray to halt a fistfight
between 2 women. On Sep 23 the owner and 3 others associated with the
club were charged with involuntary manslaughter.
(SFC, 2/18/03, A1)(SFC, 9/24/03, p.A3)
2003 Feb 17, Baltimore Orioles
pitcher Steve Bechler died of heatstroke at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.,
hospital, less than 24 hours after complaining of dizziness during a
spring training workout.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2003 Feb 17, London began
charging motorists $8 a day to drive in its center.
(SFC, 2/17/03, A2)
2003 Feb 17, European Union
leaders declared their solidarity with the United States, warning
Saddam Hussein that Iraq faced one "last chance" to disarm peacefully
but calling war a last resort.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2003 Feb 17, Israeli
soldiers killed a top Hamas fugitive in a roadside ambush. In another
operation they raided a stronghold of the militant Islamic group,
shooting dead 2 Palestinians and blowing up the house of a suspected
bombmaker.
(AP, 2/17/03)
2003 Feb 17, American CIA
operatives snatched Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (Abu
Omar) from his house in Milan and took him to Egypt, where he was
jailed, tortured and released. In 2005 an Italian judge ordered the
arrest of 13 American suspects on charges of kidnapping. In 2009 Nasr
asked for euro10 million (nearly $15 million) in damages from the
American and Italian defendants charged in his abduction.
(Econ, 7/2/05, p.48)(AP, 10/7/09)(SFC, 10/8/09, p.A2)
2003 Feb 17, In Mexico the
bodies of 3 women were found in the desert outside of Ciudad Juarez,
the latest victims in a string of killings in the border city.
(AP, 2/18/03)
2003 Feb 17, Uzbek
journalist Ergash Bobozhonov (61), who wrote articles published abroad
criticizing corruption among officials, was arrested and faced charges
including libel.
(AP, 2/22/03)
2003 Feb 18, Declaring that
America's security should not be dictated by protesters, President Bush
said he would not be swayed from compelling Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein to disarm.
(AP, 2/18/04)
2003 Feb 18, Johnny
Paycheck (64), American country singer, died in Nashville, Tenn. In
1977 he had a big hit with the David Allan Coe song "Take This Job and
Shove It."
(SFC, 2/20/03, A18)(AP, 2/18/04)
2003 Feb 18, The Bolivian
Cabinet resigned after violent street protests left 29 dead and the
government of Pres. de Lozada near collapse.
(AP, 2/18/03)
2003 Feb 18, In Colombia
heavy fighting left at least 29 leftist rebels and right-wing
paramilitary dead.
(WSJ, 2/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 18, In India a bus
carrying a wedding party fell into a gorge, killing 23 people and
injuring 31 others in the mountainous northern state of Uttaranchal.
(AP, 2/19/03)
2003 Feb 18, At least 40
Israeli tanks headed for Gaza City, accompanied by bulldozers and
attack helicopters.
(AP, 2/18/03)
2003 Feb 18, In Daegu,
South Korea, a fire raged through two packed subway trains after a man
lit a container of flammable liquid and tossed it, killing 196 people
and injuring 145. In August the perpetrator was sentenced to life in
prison.
(SFC, 2/19/03, A1)(WSJ, 2/19/03, p.A1)(AP,
2/27/03)(WSJ, 8/7/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 18, Saudi Arabia
said it has referred 90 Saudis to trial for alleged al Qaeda links.
Another 250 were reported under investigation.
(SFC, 2/19/03, A10)
2003 Feb 18, Syria said it
would pull 4,000 of 20,000 troops out of Lebanon.
(WSJ, 2/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 18, Turkey asked
the US to nearly double its multibillion dollar aid package as a
condition for allowing U.S. troops on its soil in a war against
neighboring Iraq.
(AP, 2/18/03)
2003 Feb 18, In Venezuela
police reported that the bodies of 3 soldiers, who had called for
"civic disobedience" against President Hugo Chavez's government, had
been found with their hands tied and faces wrapped with tape.
(AP, 2/18/03)
2003 Feb 19, Missouri Rep. Dick
Gephardt announced his second candidacy for president with a pledge to
repeal most of President Bush's tax cuts.
(AP, 2/19/04)
2003 Feb 19, In San Francisco
Armando Arce (26) was gunned down as he walked at Willow and Polk
streets. In 2009 Joeven Bowen was charged with Arce’s murder. Bowen was
alleged to have accompanied members of Oakland’s Nut Case gang, which
was involved with 2 murders earlier in the day.
(SFC, 9/9/09, p.D1)
2003 Feb 19, Armenia held
national elections. Pres. Kocharian was being challenged by 8
contenders who criticized his failure to secure a final deal with
Azerbaijan over the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. He
also faced accusations over about 30 unresolved political killings in
recent years and the widening gap between rich and poor in this nation
of 3.3 million people. Kocharian failed to win the necessary 50 % of
votes for re-election, forcing a runoff in balloting that the
opposition complained was rigged.
(AP, 2/19/03)(AP, 2/20/03)
2003 Feb 19, In Bolivia
Pres. de Lozada announced a new Cabinet, replacing eight ministers and
eliminating six ministries.
(AP, 2/20/03)
2003 Feb 19, China outlined
plans for an enormous, 30-50 year project to carry water from the
country’s water-saturated south to its arid north. The project was 1st
conceived by Mao Zedong in the 1950s.
(AP, 2/19/03)(SSFC, 9/5/04, p.A16)
2003 Feb 19, In Germany
Mounir el Motassadeq (28) was sentenced to the maximum 15 years in
prison for helping the Hamburg-based al-Qaida terror cell in the 9/11
attacks on the US.
(AP, 2/19/03)
2003 Feb 19, In Iran a
Russian-made military plane crash killed 302 members of the elite
Revolutionary Guard.
(AP, 2/20/03)(WSJ, 2/20/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 19, Israeli tanks
and soldiers battled Palestinian militants in the streets of Gaza City
before dawn in violence that left 11 Palestinians dead, including a
suicide bomber who tried to blow up a tank. Hamas fired 4 Qassam
rockets into Sderot in retaliation.
(AP, 2/19/03)(SFC, 2/20/03, A6)
2003 Feb 19, NATO approved
the deployment of defense equipment to Turkey in the event of a war in
Iraq. Turkey and the US failed again to agree on the size of an
economic aid package.
(AP, 2/19/03)
2003 Feb 19, In Pakistan
heavy rains fell for a 5th day and left over 26 people dead. The
country had experienced 5 years of drought.
(SFC, 2/20/03, A9)
2003 Feb 19, In the
southern Philippines suspected separatist rebels attacked Poblacion.
They rounded up some villagers and gunned down 14 people.
(AP, 2/20/03)
2003 Feb 19, In Venezuela
the secret police (DISIP) arrested Carlos Fernandez, head of the
largest business federation, for his role in the general strike.
(SFC, 2/21/03, A10)
2003 Feb 20, Pentagon
officials said they will send over 1,700 US troops to the Philippines
over the next few weeks to fight Muslim extremists.
(SFC, 2/21/03, A1)
2003 Feb 20, Sami Al-Arian, a
University of South Florida engineering professor, and seven other men
were charged with financing a Palestinian terrorist group. Four of the
men face trial; the other four have yet to be arrested. On Dec 6, 2005,
a Florida jury cleared Al-Arian and 3 co-defendants of terror charges.
(AP, 2/20/04)(SFC, 12/7/05, p.A5)(Econ, 12/10/05,
p.38)
2003 Feb 20, Former Air Force
Master Sgt. Brian Patrick Regan was convicted in Alexandria, Va., of
offering to sell U.S. intelligence to Iraq and China but acquitted of
attempted spying for Libya. Regan was later sentenced to life without
parole.
(AP, 2/20/04)
2003 Feb 20, A 17-year-old Mexican
girl mistakenly given a heart and lungs with the wrong blood type
received a second set of organs at Duke University Medical Center in
North Carolina; however, Jesica Santillan suffered brain damage and
died Feb 22.
(AP, 2/20/04)
2003 Feb 20, The Station, a
Warwick, Rhode Island, nightclub erupted in a raging fire during a
pyrotechnics display at a rock concert, 98 people were killed and 200
others injured. Flammable soundproofing was later blamed. In Feb, 2006,
Dan Biechele, manager of the band, pleaded guilty to 100 counts of
manslaughter in exchange for up to 10 years in prison. He was sentenced
to 4 years in prison. In 2008 Anheuser-Busch and a Rhode Island beer
distributor agreed to pay $21 million to settle lawsuits brought by
survivors of the fire.
(SFC, 2/22/03, A1)(WSJ, 3/3/03, p.A1)(SFC, 2/1/06,
p.A3)(SFC, 5/11/06, p.A7)(SFC, 5/24/08, p.A3)
2003 Feb 20, Orville L.
Freeman (1919-2003) former governor of Minnesota (1955-1960) and US
agriculture secretary under Pres. Kennedy and Johnson, died at age 84.
(SFC, 2/22/03, A16)
2003 Feb 20, Maurice
Blanchot (95), French postmodern novelist, died. His novels included
"Thomas the Obscure" (1973).
(SFC, 3/3/03, p.B6)
2003 Feb 20, Israeli
soldiers killed a Palestinian and carried out house-to-house searches
in the West Bank and divided the Gaza Strip into three parts,
restricting the movement of more than 1 million Palestinians.
(AP, 2/20/03)
2003 Feb 20, In
Indian-controlled Kashmir explosives hidden in snow near a town market
of Baramula killed six civilians.
(AP, 2/20/03)
2003 Feb 20, In Pakistan a
military plane crashed into a mountainside in a remote northwestern
region, killing all 17 people on board, including the chief of the air
force, Mushaf Ali Mir (57).
(AP, 2/20/03)
2003 Feb 20, Peru replaced
harsh anti-terrorism laws put in place by former Pres. Alberto
Fujimori, and will review the sentences of at least 1,800 people.
(AP, 2/21/03)
2003 Feb 20, In Saudi
Arabia a British defense worker was killed by Saud bin Ali bin Nasser,
a Saudi citizen.
(SFC, 2/21/03, A1)
2003 Feb 20, In Spain
police shut down the daily Egunkaria, a Basque-language newspaper, and
arrested its editor-in-chief and 10 other executives on suspicion of
aiding the armed separatist group ETA.
(AP, 2/20/03)
2003 Feb 21, Michael Jordan became
the first 40-year-old in NBA history to score 40 or more points,
getting 43 in the Washington Wizards' 89-86 win over the New Jersey
Nets.
(AP, 2/21/04)
2003 Feb 21, An explosion
rocked a Mobil oil refinery on the edge of Staten Island and 2 workers
were killed.
(AP, 2/21/03)
2003 Feb 21, The owners of The
Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., where 100 people perished in a
fast-moving fire the night before, denied giving the rock band Great
White permission to use fireworks blamed for setting off the blaze,
although the band's singer insisted the use of pyrotechnics had been
approved.
(AP, 2/21/04)
2003 Feb 21, Chief UN
inspector Hans Blix ordered Baghdad to begin destroying dozens of
illegal missiles and their components by March 1.
(AP, 2/22/03)(SFC, 2/22/03, A1)
2003 Feb 21, It was
reported that Iraq had recently begun shipping large quantities of oil
through its Khor al Amaya port.
(WSJ, 2/21/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 21, Israeli troops
killed 2 Islamic militants during separate attempts to attack an army
post and a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 2/21/03)
2003 Feb 21, In Peru police
arrested a prominent coca farming leader as protests in rural Peru
against the eradication of coca, the base ingredient in cocaine, moved
into their 4th day.
(AP, 2/21/03)
2003 Feb 21, Spain's PM
Jose Maria Aznar arrived in Texas for a meeting with Pres. Bush.
(WSJ, 2/21/03, p.A8)
2003 Feb 22, Pres. Bush told
Spain’s PM Aznar that nations like Mexico, Angola, Chile and Cameroon
must know that the security of the United States is at stake. Bush
threatened nations with retaliation if they did not vote for a UN
resolution backing the Iraq war. A transcript of a meeting on this day,
one month before the US-led invasion of Iraq, was published in the El
Pais daily in 2007.
(AFP, 9/26/07)
2003 Feb 22, Jesica Santillan, the
teenager who'd survived a botched heart-lung transplant long enough to
get a second set of donated organs, died two days after the second
transplant at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina.
(AP, 2/22/04)
2003 Feb 22, In northern
Afghanistan at least six civilians were killed when factional fighting
broke out between 2 rival warlords in Faryab province.
(AP, 2/23/03)
2003 Feb 22, Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Turkmenistan invited India to join their $3.2-billion
natural gas pipeline project, indicating the plan would not be
economically viable without New Delhi's participation.
(AP, 2/22/03)
2003 Feb 22, Israeli troops
opened fire on a crowd in Nablus after clashes erupted while soldiers
were searching door to door for militants. 2 Palestinians were killed
in the gunfire.
(AP, 2/22/03)
2003 Feb 22, In Rome,
Italy, some 2,000 cat lovers marched in the city's 1st Cat Pride march
and demanded protection for the many, local stray cats.
(SSFC, 2/23/03, A2)
2003 Feb 22, In southern
Pakistan gunmen opened fire inside a Shiite mosque, killing at least 9
worshippers and injuring at least 10 others.
(AP, 2/22/03)(SSFC, 2/23/03, A17)
2003 Feb 23, In the 45th US
Grammy's in NYC Norah Jones won 3 awards as did Bruce Springsteen for
his 9/11-inspired album "The Rising."
(SFC, 2/24/03, p.D1)
2003 Feb 23, Robert K. Merton
(b.1910), writer and sociologist, died. In 1965 he authored “On the
Shoulders of Giants” (OTSOG), wherein he traced the eponymous title,
usually attributed to Isaac Newton, to Bernard of Chartres in about
1130. [see 1159]
(www.asanet.org/footnotes/mar03/indextwo.html)
2003 Feb 23, In northern
Greece a bus plunged off a highway bridge, killing at least 14 people.
(AP, 2/23/03)
2003 Feb 23, In Iraq Saddam
Hussein met separately with Russian Yevgeny Primakov and former US
attorney gen'l. Ramsay Clark. Clark said Hussein feared that Pres. Bush
had made up his mind to attack and that there was nothing he could do
to prevent it.
(SFC, 2/25/03, A10)
2003 Feb 23, The UN
Children's Fund and Iraqi health teams began a five-day campaign to
vaccinate 4 million Iraqi children against polio.
(AP, 2/23/03)
2003 Feb 23, Israeli troops
raided Beit Hanoun in Gaza, blew up five homes of suspected militants,
battled masked gunmen and shot from tank-mounted machine guns toward
dozens of stone throwers. Six Palestinians were killed and 28 wounded.
2 more Palestinians were killed elsewhere in Gaza.
(AP, 2/23/03)
2003 Feb 23, In Malawi a
lion, who escaped from Kasungu National Park and attacked and killed
about 7 people, was shot and killed by game hunters.
(AP, 2/24/03)
2003 Feb 23, The Philippine
government said it will not permit U.S. forces to join Filipino troops
in combat against Muslim extremists.
(AP, 2/23/03)
2003 Feb 24, Seeking U.N. approval
for war against Iraq, the United States, Britain and Spain submitted a
resolution to the Security Council declaring that Saddam Hussein had
missed "the final opportunity" to disarm peacefully and indicating that
he had to face the consequences.
(SFC, 2/25/03, A1)(AP, 2/24/04)
2003 Feb 24, Dan Rather
interviewed Saddam Hussein via satellite and Hussein proposed a live
debate with Pres. Bush. Hussein said he would rather die than leave his
country and that he would not destroy its wealth by setting fire to its
oil wells in the event of a U.S.-led invasion.
(SFC, 2/25/03, A10)(AP, 2/26/03)
2003 Feb 24, Afghanistan's
minister of mines and industry died along with seven other people when
their plane crashed in the Arabian Sea shortly after takeoff from the
southern Pakistan port city of Karachi.
(AP, 2/24/03)
2003 Feb 24, Historian
Christopher Hill (91), a Marxist whose reinterpretation of the 17th
century changed the way Britons regard the English revolution, died.
His books included "The World Turned Upside Down" (1972).
(AP, 2/26/03)(SFC, 2/27/03, A20)
2003 Feb 24, In China
accidents in 3 coal mines killed at least 49 miners and left 10 others
missing.
(AP, 2/25/03)
2003 Feb 24, A devastating
earthquake shook western China, killing at least 268 people, injuring
some 2,000 and flattening homes, schools and other buildings near the
Silk Road oasis of Kashgar. The death toll soon rose to at least 266
people, with another 2,000 injured.
(SFC, 2/26/03, A8)(AP, 2/25/04)
2003 Feb 24, In
northeastern Congo hundreds of civilians were killed and hundreds more
were missing after Congolese rebels allied with the government seized a
key town and launched a two-day campaign of murder, rape, looting and
destruction. In 2009 Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo faced trial
for planning and directing the massacre of more than 200 villagers in
Bogoro.
(AP, 3/1/03)(AP, 11/25/09)
2003 Feb 24, Bernard
Loiseau (52), a celebrated French chef whose Cote D'Or restaurant in a
small Burgundy town became a mecca for the world's gourmets, died of
apparent suicide. In 2005 Rudolph Chelminski authored “The
Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine.”
(AP, 2/25/03)(SSFC, 6/12/05, p.B5)
2003 Feb 24, In Indonesia a
fire sparked by an explosion caused a small ferry to sink off northern
Sumatra, killing 8 people and leaving 19 others missing.
(AP, 2/24/03)
2003 Feb 24, The UN
indicted former Indonesia military chief Wiranto, 6 generals and an
ex-governor for the bloodbath preceding East Timor independence.
(WSJ, 2/25/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 24, Turkey's
Cabinet agreed to the deployment of tens of thousands of U.S. combat
troops ahead of a possible war in Iraq. The measure is expected to face
a vote in Turkey's parliament Feb 25.
(AP, 2/24/03)
2003 Feb 24, In Zambia
former President Frederick Chiluba (59) was arrested and charged with
stealing from the government while in office. In August Chiluba was
charged with stealing over $40 million during his rule.
(AP, 2/24/03)(WSJ, 8/6/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 25, Chief U.N. weapons
inspector Hans Blix said Iraq was showing new signs of real
cooperation, but President Bush was dismissive, predicting Saddam
Hussein would try to "fool the world one more time."
(AP, 2/25/04)
2003 Feb 25, A US Army
Black Hawk helicopter on night training crashed in the Kuwaiti desert,
killing all four crew members.
(AP, 2/25/03)
2003 Feb 25, In Alabama 4
job seekers were killed at an employment agency following an argument
over a CD player.
(WSJ, 2/25/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 25, In
southwestern Afghanistan assailants gunned down Habibullah Jan, a
district administrator in Nimroz province, as he left a mosque in
Dilaram.
(AP, 2/26/03)
2003 Feb 25, Striking
government workers brought much of Algeria, but not its lucrative oil
fields, to a halt, with no public transport and few flights. Suspected
Islamic extremists fired machine guns at cars at a roadblock, killing
12 people.
(AP, 2/25/03)(AP, 2/26/03)
2003 Feb 25, In Chile a
judge indicted 2 former commanders of the once feared secret police in
the 1974 assassination in Argentina of a former army commander opposed
to then-Pres. Augusto Pinochet. Gen. Manuel Contreras and Brig. Pedro
Espinoza were charged with homicide. 3 others, Gen'ls. Raul Iturriaga,
Jose Zara, and Iturriaga's brother, Jorge, were also indicted.
(AP, 2/26/03)
2003 Feb 25, China issued
its first group of long-term residency permits to 46 foreigners,
letting them live in the country for up to five years.
(AP, 2/25/03)
2003 Feb 25, Iraq provided
new information about its weapons and reported the discovery of 2
bombs, including one possibly filled with a biological agent.
(AP, 2/25/03)
2003 Feb 25, Israeli
soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager in the Gaza Strip, and
a Hamas activist was critically wounded in an explosion in his home.
(AP, 2/25/03)
2003 Feb 25, In Kenya Pres.
Mwai Kibaki ordered the release of 28 death row inmates and commuted
the death sentences of another 195 inmates to life in prison, following
his campaign pledge to reform Kenya's prison system.
(AP, 2/25/03)
2003 Feb 25, In Malaysia a
summit of 116 developing countries suspicious of US military dominance
united behind calls to give Baghdad more time to disarm.
(AP, 2/25/03)
2003 Feb 25, In Mexico a
court upheld the conviction of an Egyptian man, Abdel Latif
Sharif, for one of the first in a series of murders of women in the
border city of Ciudad Juarez, but lowered the man's prison sentence to
20 years.
(AP, 2/26/03)
2003 Feb 25, In Nigeria
cars and buses ground to a halt in Africa's leading oil-producing
nation, gripped by its worst fuel shortage since military rule ended
four years ago. Nigeria, with a population of 120 million people,
consumes 300,000 barrels of crude oil daily. Panic buying followed a
recent strike.
(AP, 2/25/03)
2003 Feb 25, In South Korea
Roh Moo-hyun took power as president.
(AP, 2/25/03)
2003 Feb 26, The National
Book Critics Circle for general nonfiction went to Samantha Power for
"A Problem from Hell: American and the Age of Genocide."
(SFC, 2/27/03, A2)
2003 Feb 26, President Bush,
offering new justification for war in Iraq, told a think tank that
"ending this direct and growing threat" from Saddam Hussein would pave
the way for peace in the Middle East and encourage democracy throughout
the Arab world.
(AP, 2/26/04)
2003 Feb 26, In a victory for
abortion foes, the Supreme Court ruled that federal racketeering and
extortion laws had been wrongly used to try to stop blockades,
harassment and violent protests outside clinics.
(AP, 2/26/04)
2003 Feb 26, NYC chose an
airy spire, designed by Daniel Libeskind, for the site of the former
World Trade Center destroyed on 9/11/2001. The spire would be taller
than any other building in the world at a height of 1,776 feet.
(AP, 2/27/03)
2003 Feb 26, In Washington
DC war protesters tied up phones, fax machines and computers as part of
a "virtual march."
(SFC, 2/27/03, A14)
2003 Feb 26, In Hartford,
Conn., a nursing home fire at the Greenwood Health Center killed 16
residents. A patient charged with setting the blaze was later ruled
incompetent to stand trial.
(SFC, 2/27/03, A5)(AP, 2/26/08)
2003 Feb 26, In Algeria it
was reported that more than 7,000 people were believed missing at the
hands of security forces during the 1990s.
(AP, 2/26/03)
2003 Feb 26, A Colombian
army Black Hawk helicopter carrying 23 crewmembers and elite troops
crashed in the northern mountains. All aboard were feared dead.
(AP, 2/27/03)
2003 Feb 26, Striking
Dominica public workers agreed to end a 6-day strike that slowed air
transportation and mail service, after the government agreed to review
its proposal to cut the work force.
(AP, 2/26/03)
2003 Feb 26, French Prime
Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin warned that waging war against Iraq now,
would split the international community and "be perceived as
precipitous and illegitimate."
(AP, 2/26/03)
2003 Feb 26, In Guatemala
striking teachers seized a pumping station on the nation's only oil
pipeline to press their demands for a hefty wage increase and better
schools. About 60,000 of the country's 80,000 teachers are striking to
demand a near-doubling of salaries that now range from about $190 to
$390 per month. They also seek improved school buildings, more books
and better school lunches.
(AP, 2/27/03)
2003 Feb 26, In India a gun
battle, kidnappings, ballot theft and destruction of voting machines
marked polling in two of the four Indian states where new legislatures
were elected.
(AP, 2/26/03)
2003 Feb 26, Israel's PM
Ariel Sharon established a coalition government dominated by fierce
opponents of Palestinian statehood.
(AP, 2/26/03)
2003 Feb 26, South Korea's
parliament approved Goh Kun, a former mayor of Seoul, to become PM in
the newly installed government of Pres. Roh Moo-hyun.
(AP, 2/26/03)
2003 Feb 27, The Bush
administration lowered the terror alert threat to code yellow.
(SFC, 2/28/03, A3)
2003 Feb 27, Fred Rogers
(74), who gently invited millions of children to be his neighbor as
host of the public television show "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" for
more than 30 years, died of cancer.
(AP, 2/27/03)(SFC, 2/28/03, A1)
2003 Feb 27, Biljana
Plavsic, the former Bosnian Serb leader who expressed remorse for the
horrors committed against non-Serbs during the Bosnian war, was
sentenced to 11 years in prison. Later this year she was transferred to
Sweden to serve her sentence.
(AP, 2/27/03)(AP, 9/15/09)
2003 Feb 27, In Cuba
America's top diplomat said that the Castro government had seized some
5,101 books shipped in by the US government.
(SFC, 2/28/03, A13)
2003 Feb 27, In Egypt tens
of thousands gathered for an anti-war demonstration in Cairo.
(SFC, 2/28/03, A20)
2003 Feb 27, Iraq agreed in
principle to destroy its Al Samoud Two missiles, two days before a U.N.
deadline.
(AP, 2/27/04)
2003 Feb 27, In Lithuania
Rolandas Paksas became the country's 3rd president since it gained
independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
(AP, 2/27/03)
2003 Feb 27,
Semi-nomadic fighters attacked a village near Nigeria's remote eastern
border with Cameroon, reportedly leaving dozens of people, including
seven policemen and a soldier, dead. Separately a large dugout canoe
capsized on the Niger River, drowning at least 30 passengers.
(AP, 3/3/03)
2003 Feb 28, The Ninth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals stood by its ruling that reciting the Pledge
of Allegiance in public schools was unconstitutional because of the
words "under God."
(AP, 2/28/04)
2003 Feb 28, The FDA announced
that every bottle of ephedra would soon bear stern warnings that the
popular herb could cause heart attacks or strokes, even kill.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2003 Feb 28, NASA released video
taken aboard Columbia that had miraculously survived the fiery
destruction of the space shuttle with the loss of all seven astronauts;
in the footage, four of the crew members can be seen doing routine
chores and admiring the view outside the cockpit.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2003 Feb 28, The
International Atomic Energy Agency said it has sent an emergency
mission to Nigeria to help find an undisclosed amount of missing or
stolen radioactive material.
(AP, 2/28/03)
2003 Feb 28, In Austria a
conservative-led coalition assumed governing power in Austria backed by
Joerg Haider's anti-immigrant party.
(AP, 2/28/03)
2003 Feb 28, Carnival began
in Brazil as a large crime wave swept Rio. Imprisoned Red Command
leader, Luiz Fernando da Costa, was believed responsible and was moved
to a maximum security prison in San Paolo state.
(SFC, 2/28/03, A16)
2003 Feb 28, Tassos
Papadopoulos took office as the fifth Greek Cypriot president, pledging
to strive for reunification.
(AP, 2/28/03)
2003 Feb 28, Czech
lawmakers elected opposition candidate Vaclav Klaus as president,
succeeding former president and long time rival Vaclav Havel.
(AP, 2/28/03)
2003 Feb 28, Fidel Sanchez
Hernandez (85), former El Salvador President (1967-1972), died. He
directed the so-called 100-hour war, when the Salvadoran army invaded
Honduras in 1969 over a territorial dispute.
(AP, 3/1/03)
2003 Feb 28, Iraq agreed to
begin destroying its Al Samoud 2 missiles within 24 hours.
(AP, 2/28/03)
2003 Feb 28, Ivory
Coast-based mercenary fighters attacked and captured Toe Town on
Liberia's eastern border. Liberia's government considered the assault
"highly provocative" and "tantamount to a declaration of war" by Ivory
Coast.
(AP, 3/1/03)
2003 Feb, John Brady Kiesling, US
career diplomat in Athens, resigned over the Bush policy towards Iraq.
(SFC, 3/16/03, p.D4)
2003 Feb, Saddam Hussein accepted
an 11th-hour offer to flee into exile weeks ahead of the U.S.-led
invasion, but Arab League officials scuttled the proposal. The exile
initiative was spearheaded by the late president of the United Arab
Emirates, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, at an emergency Arab summit
held in Egypt. This was not made public until 2005 when Sheik Mohammed
Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the son of Sheik Zayed, reported it in an
interview aired by Al-Arabiya TV.
(AP, 10/29/05)
2003 Feb, War flared up in Sudan’s
northwestern region of Darfur.
(Econ, 1/10/04, p.42)
2003 Feb, Thailand’s PM Thaksin
Shinawatra began a war on drugs aimed primarily at the methamphetamine
market. Some 5% of the population were reported to be addicts. A
3-month shooting spree left some 2,500 people dead.
(SFC, 5/29/03, p.A7)(Econ, 1/26/08, p.42)
2003 Mar 1, The US
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) ceased to exist as it was
incorporated into the Dept. of Homeland Security.
(SFC, 3/1/03, A6)
2003 Mar 1, The US
designated 3 rebel groups in Chechnya as terrorist organizations linked
to al-Qaeda and imposed a freeze on their US assets.
(SSFC, 3/2/03, A21)
2003 Mar 1, In Geneva more
than 170 nations agreed, despite US objections, on a text for a tobacco
treaty that would impose worldwide restrictions on advertising and
labeling, while clamping down on smuggling and second-hand smoke.
(AP, 3/1/03)
2003 Mar 1, In Brazil a
truce between landless farm workers and President Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva peace ended, when some 1,000 landless farmers occupied a ranch 80
miles west of Sao Paulo.
(AP, 3/6/03)
2003 Mar 1, Rebels attacked
the motorcade of Chechnya's pro-Moscow leader, Akhmad Kadyrov, killing
four bodyguards and three policemen.
(AP, 3/3/03)
2003 Mar 1, Arab leaders
held a summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. The UAR became the 1st Arab
country to call for Saddam Hussein to step down.
(SSFC, 3/2/03, A8)
2003 Mar 1, Iraq destroyed
4 of over 100 Al Samoud 2 missiles and agreed with the UN on a
timetable to dismantle the rest of the missile program.
(AP, 3/1/03)(SSFC, 3/2/03, A1)
2003 Mar 1, In the Ivory
Coast government helicopter gunships attacked a rebel-held Bin-Houye,
killing 20 civilians and injuring many others.
(AP, 3/2/03)
2003 Mar 1, In Pakistan a
joint raid outside Islamabad by CIA and Pakistani agents led to the
arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (Khaled Sheikh Mohammed), the
suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, along with 2
others. Documents and computer files later revealed that the al Qaeda
biochemical weapons program was well advanced.
(AP, 3/1/03)(SSFC, 3/23/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 1, In Poland the
year-old left-leaning government under PM Leszek Miller collapsed after
an emergency meeting between coalition partners broke down in a bitter
dispute sparked by a new tax plan.
(AP, 3/1/03)(SSFC, 3/2/03, A7)
2003 Mar 1, A small plane
crashed in central Russia, killing 11 people.
(AP, 3/1/03)
2003 Mar 1, In South Korea
some 100,000 older people held a pro-US rally in Seoul. Hours later
thousands of young people held an anti-US rally.
(SSFC, 3/2/03, A16)
2003 Mar 1, In central
Taiwan a train filled with tourists on a weekend outing overturned
while descending a mountain, killing 17 people and injuring 102.
(AP, 3/1/03)
2003 Mar 1, Turkey's
parliament failed to approve a bill allowing in American combat troops
to open a northern front against Iraq. Lawmakers voted 264-250 in favor
of stationing US troops but that was 3 votes shy of a constitutionally
mandated simple majority.
(AP, 3/2/03)(AP, 3/1/08)
2003 Mar 1, The United Arab
Emirates called for Saddam Hussein to step down, the first Arab country
to do so publicly.
(AP, 3/1/04)
2003 Mar 2, Fidel Castro
offered to mediate with North Korea over its nuclear program, though he
acknowledged Cuba's ability to stem the growing crisis was limited.
(AP, 3/2/03)
2003 Mar 2, In Estonia a
center-left party depicting itself as a champion of the poor barely won
the popular vote in parliamentary elections, which could make it
difficult to form a coalition government.
(AP, 3/3/03)
2003 Mar 2, Israeli troops
backed by tanks and helicopters raided a Gaza Strip town, killing two
Palestinians in fierce fighting and demolishing an apartment building
and the exterior wall of a hospital.
(AP, 3/2/03)
2003 Mar 2, Netherlands,
the world's 4th largest poultry exporter, discovered a bird flu in some
its poultry for the 1st time in 30 years.
(WSJ, 3/6/03, p.A11)
2003 Mar 2, In Karachi,
Pakistan, religious coalitions joined tens of thousands of others in a
march to protest a possible U.S.-led war against Iraq.
(AP, 3/3/03)
2003 Mar 2, Iraq crushed another
six Al Samoud II missiles, as ordered by UN weapons inspectors.
(AP, 3/2/08)
2003 Mar 2, North Korea
deployed 4 MiGs to intercept a US RC-135S spy plane some 150 miles off
its coast.
(WSJ, 3/4/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 2, Landlocked Switzerland
became the first European country to win the America's Cup as "Alinghi"
swept Team New Zealand in five races.
(AP, 3/2/04)
2003 Mar 2, Syria
reportedly finished pulling 4,000 troops out of Lebanon in an effort to
reduce tensions and keep radical Sunni groups from attacking Israel.
(SSFC, 3/2/03, A6)
2003 Mar 2, In northern
Uganda rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army fighting a 16-year war
called a cease-fire and asked to meet Pres. Yoweri Museveni.
(AP, 3/3/03)
2003 Mar 2, The United Arab
Emirates won support from Kuwait and Bahrain in its call for Saddam
Hussein to quit power to avert a war.
(AP, 3/3/03)
2003 Mar 3, President Bush offered
a rough blueprint for adding drug benefits to Medicare.
(AP, 3/3/04)
2003 Mar 3, Malcolm Kilduff (75),
the White House spokesman who announced to a shocked world the death of
President Kennedy, died in Beattyville, Ky.
(AP, 3/3/04)
2003 Mar 3, Israeli troops
raided a Gaza refugee camp and arrested Hamas co-founder Mohammed Taha.
He founded Hamas in 1987, along with the group's spiritual leader,
Sheik Ahmed Yassin, and three other senior clerics. 8
Palestinians, among them a pregnant woman, were killed in clashes in
the camp.
(AP, 3/3/03)
2003 Mar 3, In Kenya US
diplomats opened a new embassy in Nairobi, replacing the one destroyed
4 ½ years ago when terrorists launched attacks.
(AP, 3/4/03)
2003 Mar 3, A Special Court for
Sierra Leone indicted Liberian Pres. Charles Taylor on charges
including murder, rape, sexual slavery, conscripting child soldiers and
terrorizing civilians for his support of rebels during Sierra Leone
civil war. The Indictment was unsealed on June 4, 2003, during Taylor's
first overseas trip since his indictment.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2003 Mar 3, Lawmakers from
Serbia and Montenegro inaugurated their new parliament, formally
replacing Yugoslavia with the new state.
(AP, 3/3/03)
2003 Mar 3, In Tanzania a
new U.S. Embassy opened in Dar Es Salaam, replacing the one destroyed 4
½ years ago when terrorists launched attacks.
(AP, 3/4/03)
2003 Mar 3, In
northern Uganda a military firing squad executed 3 soldiers who had
been convicted of murdering civilians.
(AP, 3/4/03)
2003 Mar 4, It was later reported
that CNN top people found out that the US war on Iraq would begin Mar
19. The Army's oldest armored division, "Old Ironsides," got orders to
head for the Persian Gulf as the total of U.S. land, sea and air forces
arrayed against Iraq or preparing to go neared 300,000.
(SFC, 4/3/03, p.W2)(AP, 3/4/04)
2003 Mar 4, The Bank of
Canada raised its key overnight interest rate to 3 percent from 2.75
percent, as it fretted about a steeper inflation rate.
(AP, 3/4/03)
2003 Mar 4, In the
Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir a bus fell into a deep gorge,
killing at least nine people and injuring 52.
(AP, 3/4/03)
2003 Mar 4, Iran called for
UN-supervised elections in neighboring Iraq and urged the divided Iraqi
opposition to reconcile with Pres. Saddam Hussein as part of a plan
aimed at averting a US-led war on Iraq.
(AP, 3/4/03)
2003 Mar 4, In northern
Iraq Kurdish soldiers killed 5 Muslim men in a possible case of
mistaken identity.
(AP, 3/4/03)(SFC, 3/5/03, p.A10)
2003 Mar 4, Israeli troops
killed one Palestinian and wounded another in an shootout at an
Internet cafe in the West Bank.
(AP, 3/4/03)
2003 Mar 4, In the
Philippines a bomb hidden in a backpack exploded at the Davao airport
on Mindanao, killing 21 people and wounding some 150.
(AP, 3/4/03)(SFC, 3/5/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 5, Thousands of US
students nationwide walked out of classes to protest a possible war.
(AP, 3/5/04)
2003 Mar 5, Comedian George Miller
(b.1950) died in Los Angeles.
(AP,
3/5/04)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Miller_(comedian))
2003 Mar 5, In Argentina
the Supreme declared unconstitutional a government decree that
converted dollar bank accounts to devalued pesos.
(AP, 3/5/03)
2003 Mar 5, In Armenia
Pres. Robert Kocharian won Armenia's presidential runoff. The
opposition claimed he was trying to fix the outcome. Kocharian had 67.5
percent and challenger Stepan Demirchian had 32.5 percent,
(AP, 3/6/03)
2003 Mar 5, Sir Hardy Amies
(93), Savile Row designer and self-described snob, died.
(SFC, 3/6/03, p.A19)
2003 Mar 5, Cambodia sealed
its border with Thailand, due to sluggish progress "to normalize
relations in border areas" since January's anti-Thai riots.
(AP, 3/5/03)
2003 Mar 5, In northeastern
Colombia a bomb set off by suspected rebels ripped through a shopping
center in Cucuta, killing 7 people, injuring at least 20 and setting
the complex on fire.
(AP, 3/5/03)
2003 Mar 5, The foreign
ministers of France, Germany and Russia said they will block any
attempt to get UN approval for war against Iraq.
(AP, 3/5/03)
2003 Mar 5, In Israel a
Palestinian suicide bombing, the 1st in two months, tore apart a packed
Israeli bus in the port city of Haifa, killing at least 16 people and
wounding about 55.
(AP, 3/5/03)
2003 Mar 5, A Kuwaiti policeman
was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the 2002 attack that wounded
two U.S. soldiers on a Kuwaiti desert highway.
(AP, 3/5/04)
2003 Mar 5, In
Nigeria Marshall Harry, a senior member of the main opposition
party, was shot and killed by gunmen who broke into his home in the
capital.
(AP, 3/5/03)
2003 Mar 6, President Bush
held a new conference and warned that he was prepared to go to war soon
in Iraq with or without UN backing.
(AP, 3/7/03)(SFC, 3/7/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 6, The United States
ratified a treaty on cutting active U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear
warheads by two-thirds.
(AP, 3/6/04)
2003 Mar 6, Democrats blocked
President Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada to a federal appeals
court.
(AP, 3/6/04)
2003 Mar 6, An Air Algerie
Boeing 737 jet crashed killing 102 passengers and crew in the southern
Algerian province of Tamanrasset. At least 1 person survived.
(AP, 3/6/03)(SFC, 3/7/03, p.A14)
2003 Mar 6, Britain offered
to compromise on a US-backed resolution by giving Saddam Hussein a
short deadline to prove he has eliminated all banned weapons or face an
attack.
(AP, 3/6/03)
2003 Mar 6, The Chinese
government committed itself to helping its poorest citizens, unveiling
a new budget aimed at helping the countryside and maintaining growth.
Defense was budgeted a 9.3% rise, the lowest in 14 years, and plans
were made to abolish the agency in charge of five-year plans.
(AP, 3/6/03)(SFC, 3/6/03, p.A14)(WSJ, 3/6/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 6, The Congolese
government and rebels have agreed in Pretoria to meld their armed
forces into a new national army in a bid to end a 4 ½-year civil
war and reunify the vast central African nation.
(AP, 3/7/03)
2003 Mar 6, Pres. Fidel
Castro was elected a sixth term and he wasted no time in criticizing
the US, warning that Cuba doesn't need its foreign office.
(AP, 3/7/03)
2003 Mar 6, Zdenek Adamec
(19) set himself on fire in downtown Prague on to protest the Czech
political situation and what he called the domination of the wealthy in
the world.
(AP, 3/6/03)
2003 Mar 6, Israeli troops
hunting Islamic militants after a deadly suicide bombing stormed the
Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza in a raid that left 11 Palestinians dead
and 110 wounded.
(AP, 3/6/03)
2003 Mar 6, Italian police
raided a house in Palermo and captured Salvatore Rinella (49), a
top Mafia boss.
(AP, 3/7/03)
2003 Mar 7, Kazem al-Sahir
(41), Iraqi pop singer with over 30 million records sold, scheduled a
benefit concert at the Berkeley Community Theater. His US tour was set
to raise medical and school supplies for Iraqi children.
(SSFC, 3/2/03, A28)(SFC, 3/6/03, p.F1)
2003 Mar 7, The US and its
allies moved to set March 17 as the final deadline for Saddam Hussein
to prove he has given up his weapons of mass destruction.
(AP, 3/8/03)(SFC, 3/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 7, Pres. Bush
invoked economic sanctions against Pres. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and
dozens of officials of his government on grounds they undermined the
country's democratic institutions.
(AP, 3/7/03)
2003 Mar 7, The US Labor
Dept. reported that US jobs fell 308,000 in Feb.
(SFC, 3/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 7, Virtually every
musical on Broadway shut down as musicians went on strike, and actors
and stagehands said they wouldn't cross their picket lines; the walkout
lasted four days.
(SFC, 3/8/03, p.A3) (AP, 3/7/04)
2003 Mar 7, Jose Marcio Ayres
(49), Brazilian biologist and senior Wildlife Conservation Society
(WCS) biologist, died in NYC. In 1996 he set up the Mamiraua
Sustainable Development Reserve to protect a 4,300 square-mile area of
the Amazon rain forest.
(Econ, 6/19/04, p.77)
2003 Mar 7, International
officials froze assets linked to top Bosnian-Serb war crimes fugitive
Radovan Karadzic. A panel of Bosnian and int'l. judges ordered Bosnia's
Serb Republic to pay $2.25 million in compensation for the 1995
massacre at Srebrenica.
(AP, 3/7/03)(SFC, 3/8/03, p.A7)
2003 Mar 7, In Bulgaria Ilya
Pavlov, owner of the energy and tourism-related company Multigroup and
Bulgaria's richest man, was killed by a sniper in Sofia. Pavlov, a
former wrestler, was instrumental in the demise of the Kremikovtzi
steel plant.
(AP, 10/26/05)(http://tinyurl.com/hju8l)(WSJ,
8/4/08, p.A8)
2003 Mar 7, Heavy snow set
off avalanches along the cease-fire line dividing Kashmir between India
and Pakistan, killing at least 17 people, mostly soldiers, and
stranding hundreds.
(AP, 3/7/03)
2003 Mar 7, Nai Shwe Kyin
(90), a veteran guerrilla leader from Myanmar's Mon ethnic minority,
died. He founded the Mon Freedom League in 1947. He also helped found
the Mon People's Front in 1952 and the New Mon State Party in 1958. The
party signed a cease-fire agreement with Myanmar's military government
in 1995.
(AP, 3/8/03)
2003 Mar 7, In Nigeria the
"Oba," or king, of Lagos Island, Adeyinka Oyekan II (92), died. Ritual
human sacrifice was feared and a week of mourning left streets deserted.
(AP, 3/14/03)
2003 Mar 7, Pakistan's
Baluchistan provincial home minister said that two sons of Osama
bin Laden, Saad and Hamza bin Laden, were arrested in southwestern
Afghanistan. The report was later proved false.
(AP, 3/7/03)
2003 Mar 7, Mohamed
ElBaradei, UN chief nuclear weapons inspector, expressed frustration at
the quality of US information on Iraqi weapons and charged that some
documents may have been faked.
(SFC, 3/8/03, p.A11)
2003 Mar 8, Michael Moore
won best original screenplay for "Bowling for Columbine" in the 55th
annual Writer's Guild Awards.
(SFC, 3/10/03, p.D2)
2003 Mar 8, Former US
president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter condemned
preparations for a unilateral US attack on Iraq.
(AP, 3/9/03)
2003 Mar 8, Thousands of US
women staged "Code Pink" marches against a possible war with Iraq. Some
4,000 marched near the White House.
(SSFC, 3/9/03, p.A3)
2003 Mar 8, Elliot Jaques (86),
psychoanalyst, died. He coined the term mid-life crises and adopted
hierarchies that reflected employees' ability to handle long-range
assignments.
(SFC, 1/21/02, p.A21)
2003 Mar 8, The first
Afghan radio station programmed solely for women began broadcasting in
Kabul. Daily broadcasts will increase to 2 hours next week and up to 4
hours in several months.
(AP, 3/9/03)
2003 Mar 8, An
Argentine judge asked Interpol to arrest four Iranian diplomats,
accusing them of responsibility in a deadly terrorist attack that
destroyed a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994.
(AP, 3/9/03)
2003 Mar 8, In Romania 5
Iraqi diplomats were expelled for "activities incompatible with their
status." Last week the US expelled two U.N.-based Iraqi diplomats
and identified 300 Iraqis in 60 countries, some operating as diplomats
out of Iraqi embassies, whom it wanted expelled.
(AP, 3/10/03)
2003 Mar 8, In the Czech
Republic a bus accident near Ceske Budejovice left 17 dead. 2 more
people soon died from injuries sustained in the crash.
(AP, 3/9/03)
2003 Mar 8, In India
separatist rebels in northeastern Assam state shot and killed three
laborers, ignited a huge fire by launching mortars at an oil refinery
and used explosives to damage a pipeline.
(AP, 3/8/03)
2003 Mar 8, Interpol
reissued an international arrest warrant charging former Peru President
Alberto Fujimori with murder after receiving additional information
from the government.
(AP, 3/8/03)
2003 Mar 8, Iraq resumed
the destruction of banned Al Samoud 2 missiles after taking a day off
and called on the UN to lift sanctions after arms inspectors gave a
positive assessment of Baghdad's cooperation. Iraq also demanded that
the UN strip Israel of weapons of mass destruction, require withdrawal
from occupied Palestinian territory and that the UN brand the US and
Britain as liars.
(AP, 3/8/03)(SSFC, 3/9/03, p.A8)
2003 Mar 8, An Israeli helicopter
missile strike killed Ibrahim Makadmeh (51), the top commander of
Hamas' military wing and three other militants in a car in the Gaza
Strip. Hamas vowed revenge; the Israeli army promised to strike the
militants again.
(AP, 3/8/03)(AP, 3/8/08)
2003 Mar 8, Malta became
the first of 10 countries to vote on whether to join the European
Union, which is luring new members with a $40 billion aid package. The
referendum was approved 53.65 to 46.35%.
(AP, 3/8/03)(SFC, 3/10/03, p.A3)
2003 Mar 8, The presidents
of Peru and Ecuador inaugurated a bridge connecting the two nations.
The $1.8-million bridge spans the Canchis River near the Peruvian town
of Namballe, 500 miles northeast of Lima.
(AP, 3/9/03)
2003 Mar 9, Bill Clinton
and Bob Dole made their debut as 2-minute TV commentators on 60
Minutes. Their 1st topic was "tax cuts in times of war."
(WSJ, 3/7/03, p.A1)(NW, 3/17/03, p.45)
2003 Mar 9, Renee
Zellwegger, lead actress in "Chicago," won the top Screen Actors Guild
Award along with Daniel Day-Lewis, for his role in "Gangs of New York."
(SFC, 3/10/03, p.A2)
2003 Mar 9, In Chechnya 2
Russian armored personnel carriers opened fire in Staraya Sunzha,
killing 2 policemen.
(AP, 3/12/03)
2003 Mar 9, In southern
India a van driver lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a bus,
killing 17 people and injuring 13 others.
(AP, 3/9/03)
2003 Mar 9, Nauru's Pres.
Bernard Dowiyogo (57), known as a pragmatic leader of the
environmentally devastated South Pacific island, died in Washington DC.
He signed an executive order as he lay dying, at the behest of US
officials, ending the Nauru offshore banking system and its
economic-citizenship program.
(AP, 3/10/03)(WSJ, 5/16/03, p.A4)
2003 Mar 9, In Rawalpindi,
Pakistan, hundreds of thousands of people protested a possible US war
with Iraq.
(SFC, 3/10/03, p.A11)
2003 Mar 9, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, the leader of Turkey's ruling party, won a by-election. He was
soon confirmed as PM replacing Abdullah Gul.
(AP, 3/9/03)(WSJ, 3/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 9, In Venezuela
Pres. Hugo Chavez claimed an international campaign involving the US
was trying to discredit his government and he warned other countries
not to be fooled by the so-called smear tactics.
(AP, 3/9/03)
2003 Mar 10, Facing almost certain
defeat, the United States and Britain delayed a vote in the U.N.
Security Council to give Saddam Hussein an ultimatum to disarm.
(AP, 3/10/04)
2003 Mar 10, Natalie Maines, lead
singer of the Dixie Chicks, told a London audience: "Just so you know
... we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."
(AP, 3/10/08)
2003 Mar 10, In NYC 2
undercover police officers were killed during an undercover gun buy on
Staten Island. 3 people were arrested the next day. Ronell Wilson
climbed into the back seat of an unmarked police car on the pretense of
selling an illegal gun. He shot officers Rodney Andrews and James
Nemorin in the head. In 2007 Wilson (24) was convicted and sentenced to
death. Wilson was one of seven people arrested in his case; the other
six pleaded guilty to various charges.
(SFC, 3/12/03, p.A6)(AP, 1/31/07)
2003 Mar 10, In
Brownsville, Texas, a woman and her common-law husband killed and
beheaded their 3 children, ages 3 years to 2 months.
(SFC, 3/13/03, p.A6)
2003 Mar 10, Carolyn Doty
(b.1941), novelist and prof. of English at U. of Kansas, died. Her 4
novels included "A Day Later" (1980). "She managed to peer into corners
of human behavior that others overlooked."
(SFC, 3/29/03, p.A12)
2003 Mar 10, The European
Union opened a new office in Cuba.
(AP, 3/10/03)
2003 Mar 10, Two
helicopters from Mexico's Attorney General's office were shot down near
Tlapa, Guerrero, in the nation's western mountains during an
anti-narcotics operation, killing all 5 officials on board.
(AP, 3/11/03)
2003 Mar 10, The
Palestinian parliament approved the new position of PM as part of
reforms sought by the US, Europe and Israel to curb Yasser Arafat’s
near absolute powers. Mahmoud Abbas became PM without control of the
security forces or peace talks. Abbas had a doctorate in history and
his books included "The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between
Nazism and the Zionist Movement."
(AP, 3/10/03)(WSJ, 3/11/03, p.A1)(SSFC, 7/13/03, Par
p.2)
2003 Mar 10, In the
southern Philippines suspected Muslim separatist rebels seized a bus,
and two people were killed before the gunmen escaped.
(AP, 3/10/03)
2003 Mar 10, Russian
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov warned the Kremlin would vote against the
US and British resolution that gives Saddam Hussein a March 17 deadline
to disarm.
(AP, 3/10/03)
2003 Mar 10, In Sierra
Leone Foday Sankoh, a former rebel leader whose followers were known
for mutilating civilians, was indicted along with 6 others by Sierra
Leone’s war crimes tribunal. Sam Bockerie was among the indicted.
(AP, 3/11/03)(SFC, 5/7/03, p.A11)
2003 Mar 10, The Sri Lankan
navy exchanged fire with a Tamil Tiger boat off the northern coast,
sinking the rebel vessel and likely killing all 10 on board.
(AP, 3/10/03)
2003 Mar 11, Striking
Broadway musicians settled a contract dispute with theater producers to
end a walkout that shut had down 18 musicals since Mar 7, agreeing to a
smaller number of musicians in the largest theaters.
(AP, 3/11/03)
2003 Mar 11, The DJIA fell 44 to
7524, the lowest level of the year, on war concerns and bad corporate
news.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R8)
2003 Mar 11, California
scientists reported that polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), a
family of flame retardants, were found in elevated amounts in the
breasts of Bay Area women.
(SFC, 3/12/03, p.A4)
2003 Mar 11, Benetton, an
Italian retailer, said it planned to attach salt-grain sized microchip
transmitters to clothing at its 5,000 stores.
(SFC, 3/12/03, p.B1)
2003 Mar 11, A US Army
Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Fort Drum, NY, and 11 of 13 soldiers
were killed.
(SFC, 3/12/03, p.A5)
2003 Mar 11, Kofi Annan
said military action against Iraq without support of the UN security
council would be out of conformity with the UN charter. The US and
Britain considered a short extension past March 17, but rejected a
45-day deadline backed by 6 council members.
(SFC, 3/11/03, p.A1)(SFC, 3/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 11, The 18-judge
world court was inaugurated at the Hague. It had been approved Jul 17,
1998, by the Rome Treaty.
(SFC, 3/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 11, A top
Australian intelligence adviser resigned to protest the government's
hard-line policy on Iraq. Andrew Wilkie, one of its senior intelligence
analysts argued that, based on U.S. and other intelligence information
he has seen, there is currently no justification for a war on Iraq.
(IPS, 3/12/03)
2003 Mar 11, Talks to unify
the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus collapsed after rival Greek
and Turkish leaders failed to agree on a UN power-sharing agreement.
(AP, 3/11/03)
2003 Mar 11, Iraq destroyed
more Al Samoud 2 missiles raising the total destroyed to 52 of some 100.
(AP, 3/11/03)
2003 Mar 11, Israeli troops
fired a tank shell at a 3-story apartment building, then razed it,
killing a Palestinian gunman who several hours earlier had attacked an
Israeli army patrol.
(AP, 3/11/03)
2003 Mar 11, Russian Pres.
Vladimir Putin bolstered the clout of the Federal Security Service
(FSB) by giving it control over the country's border guards and
government communications.
(AP, 3/11/03)
2003 Mar 11, In Turkey Recep
Erdogan was confirmed as the prime minister.
(WSJ, 3/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 12, Elizabeth Smart, the
15-year-old girl who'd vanished from her bedroom nine months earlier,
was found alive in a Salt Lake City suburb with two drifters.
(AP, 3/12/04)
2003 Mar 12, In Iowa David
England, president of Des Moines Area Community College, was arrested
along with his wife, son and daughter for conspiracy to manufacture and
deliver marijuana.
(SSFC, 3/23/03, p.C4)
2003 Mar 12, Howard Fast (b.1914),
historical fiction author, died in Old. Greenwich, Conn. His books
included "Citizen Tom Paine" (1943), "Freedom Road" (1944), "Spartacus"
(1953) and "The Naked God" (1957).
(SFC, 3/13/03, p.A21)
2003 Mar 12, Lynne Thigpen (54),
actress, died in Los Angeles.
(AP, 3/12/04)
2003 Mar 12, In Afghanistan an
ambush on a US convoy prompted aircraft fire that killed 5 enemy
fighters.
(SFC, 3/14/03, p.A9)
2003 Mar 12, Britain proposed
compromise language giving Saddam Hussein until Mar 17 to take 6
concrete disarmament steps.
(WSJ, 3/13/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 12, It was reported that
the Congo Ebola outbreak was decimating the gorilla population with up
to 800 lost at the Lossi sanctuary. The ape population of west
equatorial Africa had fallen 50% since 1983 due to hunting and Ebola.
(WSJ, 3/12/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/7/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 12, In Nigeria tribal
fighting began between the Ijaw and Itsekiri.
(SFC, 3/21/03, p.A9)
2003 Mar 12, Serbia's PM Zoran
Djindjic was assassinated in Belgrade. A group called "The Hague
Brotherhood" was later implicated along with the paramilitary
group Unit for Special Operations. [see Mar 24].
(SFC, 4/9/03, p.A7)
2003 Mar 13, Forced into a
diplomatic retreat, U.S. officials said President Bush might delay a
vote on his troubled United Nations resolution or even drop it, and
fight Iraq without the international body's backing.
(AP, 3/13/04)
2003 Mar 13, The Senate voted
64-33 to ban a procedure that critics called partial birth abortion.
(AP, 3/13/04)
2003 Mar 13, In Alaska Robert
Sorlie of Norway won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race in nine days, 15
hours, 47 minutes.
(AP, 3/13/04)
2003 Mar 13, Israeli soldiers
mistakenly killed 2 Israeli security guards.
(SFC, 3/14/03, p.A13)
2003 Mar 13, Nepal and Maoist
rebels agreed to release all prisoners of war and set guidelines for
peace.
(WSJ, 3/14/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 13, The UN Human Rights
chief excoriated the US Guantanamo policy. He said the world shouldn't
have territory "where no law applies."
(WSJ, 3/14/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 14, Pres. Bush promised
to reveal a US "road map" to Middle East peace. It was contingent on
the confirmation of a Palestinian prime minister with real authority.
(SFC, 3/15/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 14, Police arrested 80
anti-war protesters in the SF financial district. They included Warren
Langley, former head of the Pacific Exchange.
(SFC, 3/15/03, p.A13)
2003 Mar 14, Actor Robert Blake
was released from jail on $1.5 million bail, 11 months after he was
arrested on charges of murdering his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley. Blake was
later acquitted at trial.
(AP, 3/14/08)
2003 Mar 14, Christopher Boyce,
whose Cold War spying was immortalized on film in "The Falcon and the
Snowman," was released from a halfway house in San Francisco after
about a quarter-century in prison.
(AP, 3/14/04)
2003 Mar 14, Amanda Davis (32),
writing professor at Mills College in Oakland, Ca., was killed in a
small plane crash near Ashville, NC, along with her parents. She was on
a book signing tour for her novel "Wonder When You'll Miss Me."
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.D4)
2003 Mar 14, Jean-Luc Lagardere
(b.1928), French engineer and founder of the Lagardere Group, died. In
1999 the group, among the largest of French enterprises, acquired 31.5%
of Aerospatiale.
(Econ, 11/11/06,
p.79)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_Lagard%C3%A8re)
2003 Mar 14, Hannah Foster (17)
was raped and murdered near Southampton, England. Maninder Pal Singh
Kohli fled Britain days after being named as a suspect. In 2007 a New
Delhi court ruled that Kohli (39) should face trial in Britain for the
2003 rape and murder, in a long-awaited verdict on the drawn-out
extradition wrangle.
(AP,
6/8/07)(www.nriinternet.com/NRI_Murdered/UK/Kohli/kohliIndex.htm)
2003 Mar 14, Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder gave a speech before the German Bundestag outlining the
proposed plans for reform. He pointed out three main areas which the
agenda would focus on: the economy, the system of social security, and
Germany's position on the world market. The agenda came to be called
Agenda 2010, a reference to the Lisbon Strategy's 2010 deadline.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_2010)
2003 Mar 14, In Matamoros, Mexico,
police arrested drug lord Osiel Cardenas Guillen (35), aka "El Loco."
(SFC, 3/15/03, p.A7)
2003 Mar 15, Many thousands of
anti-war demonstrators marched in SF, Washington DC and around the
world against plans for a war with Iraq.
(SFC, 3/16/03, p.A1)(AP, 3/15/08)
2003 Mar 15, In Chechnya 6 Russian
soldiers were killed by rebel fire and mines. Attackers destroyed 2
polling stations ahead of the Mar 23 constitutional referendum.
(SFC, 3/17/03, p.A4)
2003 Mar 15, Hu Jintao was chosen
to replace Jiang Zemin as the president of China.
(AP, 3/15/04)
2003 Mar 15, In Pakistan
authorities near Lahore arrested Yassir al-Jaziri, a suspected key
al-Qaeda figure.
(SFC, 3/16/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 16, Pres. Bush met with
PM Tony Blair and Spain's PM Jose Maria Aznar in the Azores and made it
clear they were ready to go to war with or without UN endorsement. Bush
said "Tomorrow is a moment of truth for the world."
(SFC, 3/17/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 16, In China Wen Jiaboa
(60) replaced Zhu Rongji as premier.
(SFC, 3/16/03, p.A16)
2003 Mar 16, Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein warned that if Iraq were attacked, it would take the war
anywhere in the world "wherever there is sky, land or water."
(AP, 3/16/04)
2003 Mar 16, In the Gaza Strip
Rachel Corrie (23) of Washington State was crushed to death by and
Israeli Army bulldozer as she tried to block the demolition of
Palestinian homes.
(SFC, 3/17/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 17, Pres. Bush gave
Saddam Hussein 48 hours to go into exile or face military onslaught.
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 17, Berlin Plus
agreement, a short title for a comprehensive package of agreements
between NATO and EU, was based on conclusions of the NATO
Washington Summit.
(www.nato.int/shape/news/2003/shape_eu/se030822a.htm)(Econ,
2/10/07, p.54)
2003 Mar 17, In Washington, D.C.,
tobacco farmer Dwight Ware Watson, claiming to be carrying bombs, drove
a tractor and trailer into a pond on the National Mall; the threat
disrupted traffic for two days until Watson surrendered; there were no
bombs.
(AP, 3/17/04)
2003 Mar 17, Herbert Aptheker
(87), historian, died. His work included a multi-volume "Documentary
History of the Negro People," and the editing of 3 volumes of letters
from W.E.B. DuBois.
(SFC, 3/21/03, p.A21)
2003 Mar 17, Pen Hadow, 41, began
a 478-mile trek from Ward Hunt Island in northern Canada to the
geographic North Pole. He reached the Pole unsupported on May 19, but a
plane has been unable to retrieve him because of broken ice and thick
clouds.
(AP, 5/27/03)
2003 Mar 17, Chinese police found
28 baby girls hidden in suitcases aboard a long-distance bus in
southern Guangxi, apparently being smuggled for sale. Police later
arrested 10 people involved in the scheme.
(AP, 3/22/03)(WSJ, 3/24/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 17, In Soro, Denmark,
Nizar Al-Khazraji (65), former Iraqi general, disappeared.
(WSJ, 4/9/03, p.A1)(SFC, 4/16/03, p.A11)
2003 Mar 17, Iraq rejected Bush's
ultimatum, saying that a U.S. attack to force Saddam from power would
be "a grave mistake."
(AP, 3/17/04)
2003 Mar 17, Israeli forces
invaded 2 communities in the Gaza Strip and gun battles left 10
Palestinians dead including a 4-yer-old girl.
(SFC, 3/18/03, p.AA6)
2003 Mar 17, In the Netherlands a
law went into effect that allowed pharmacies to fill prescriptions for
marijuana.
(SFC, 3/18/03, p.A8)
2003 Mar 17, In Nigeria ethnic
clashes left 8 people dead, including an employee of ChevronTexaco.
(AP, 3/18/03)
2003 Mar 17-May 25, Iraq was
scheduled to take over as chairman of the UN disarmament organization,
but declined the position.
(SSFC, 2/9/03, p.A16)
2003 Mar 18, The US mounted
"Operation Liberty Shield" to detain asylum seekers from suspect
countries.
(WSJ, 3/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 18, A jury in Corpus
Christi, Texas, cleared Bayer Corp. of liability in a $560 million
lawsuit that accused the pharmaceutical giant of ignoring research
linking the cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol to dozens of deaths.
(AP, 3/18/04)
2003 Mar 18, In Salt Lake City,
Brian Mitchell and Wanda Barzee were charged with aggravated
kidnapping, sexual assault and burglary in the abduction of Elizabeth
Smart, who was found with them six days earlier. Mitchell and Barzee
were later found incompetent to stand trial.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2003 Mar 18, Olympic gold medal
figure skater Sarah Hughes won the Sullivan Award as the nation's top
amateur athlete.
(AP, 3/18/04)
2003 Mar 18, A major snowstorm hit
Colorado and Wyoming with over 3-6 feet of snow. The Denver Airport
closed under the worst storm in 90 years.
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.A3)(WSJ, 3/20/03, p.A1)(SSFC,
3/23/03, p.A3)
2003 Mar 18, In Australia PM
John Howard said his government would commit 2,000 military personnel
to any U.S.-led strike aimed at disarming Iraq.
(AP, 3/19/03)
2003 Mar 18, In Colombia gunmen
killed Luis Eduardo Alfonso Parada (27), print and radio journalist,
outside his office in the eastern state of Arauca. Alfonso had reported
on alleged corruption in Arauca and said he was receiving death
threats. On Dec 30, 2009, prosecutors ordered the preventative
detention of Jose Ruben Pena Tobon, a paramilitary commander of the
right-wing paramilitary bloc that killed Alfonso.
(AP, 3/19/03)(AP, 12/30/09)
2003 Mar 18, Congo leaders signed
a cease-fire with tribal militias and local chiefs in northeastern
Congo.
(AP, 3/18/03)
2003 Mar 18, Some $900 million in
US bills and as much as 100 million in euros was taken from Iraq's
Central Bank by Saddam Hussein and his family. The New York Times
reported on May 5 that Saddam ordered the money taken from the Central
Bank and sent his son Qusai in the middle of the night. This became the
largest cash theft in recent history.
(AP, 5/6/03)(AP, 2/28/06)
2003 Mar 18, Israeli forces killed
2 Hamas militants in West Bank clashes. One Israeli solder was killed.
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.A6)(WSJ, 3/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 18, The Palestinian
parliament established the post of prime minister. It gave Mahmoud
Abbas (Abu Mazen), the new PM, control of domestic affairs and internal
security issues.
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.A3)
2003 Mar 18, In Serbia the
parliament elected Zoran Zivkovic to replace assassinated PM Zoran
Djindjic. Zivkovic promised to continue reforms, fight crime and bring
war crimes suspects to justice.
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.A7)
2003 Mar 18, In Yemen a man shot 4
Hunt Oil company workers. He killed 3 and shot himself dead.
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.A5)
2003 Mar 18-19, In Zimbabwe a
2-day national strike, called to protest the increasingly authoritarian
government, shut down businesses and disrupted transportation services
across the country.
(AP, 3/19/03)
2003 Mar 19, President Bush
ordered the start of war against Iraq. Because of the time difference,
it was early March 20 in Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom began with a few
US targeted strikes in Baghdad against Saddam Hussein, targeting him
personally with a barrage of cruise missiles and bombs as a prelude to
invasion. Iraq responded hours later, firing missiles toward American
troops positioned just across its border with Kuwait. The codename for
the invasion of Iraq was Cobra II. In 2006 Michael Gordon and Bernard
Trainor authored “Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and
Occupation of Iraq.
(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.W12)(AP, 3/19/04)(Econ, 4/8/06,
p.82)
2003 Mar 19, Tobacco farmer Dwight
Ware Watson, who'd claimed to be carrying bombs in a tractor and
trailer that he'd driven into a pond on Washington's National Mall,
surrendered after disrupting traffic for two days; there were no
explosives.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2003 Mar 19, Holmes Rolston III
(70), philosopher, clergyman and scientist, was awarded the Templeton
Prize for his work on faith-based environmental ethics.
(SFC, 3/20/03, p.A11)
2003 Mar 19, The SEC filed a civil
suit claiming that HealthSouth Corp. and its chairman Richard M.
Scrushy had committed massive accounting fraud to overstate earnings by
some $1.4 billion since 1999. Weston Smith, the former finance chief,
later pleaded guilty to 4 charges. HealthSouth fired Scrushy as
chairman and CEO. He was indicted in November.
(WSJ, 5/20/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R8)(WSJ,
6/29/05, p.A8)
2003 Mar 19, A Cuban airliner was
hijacked to Key West. 6 hijackers took control of the plane without
telling the 25 passengers and six crew members about their asylum
plans. The six were later convicted of federal hijacking charges.
(SFC, 3/20/03, p.A15)(AP, 3/19/04)
2003 Mar 19, Mudslides in a city
in Colombia's mountainous coffee-growing region left at least 11 people
dead and destroyed dozens of houses.
(AP, 3/20/03)
2003 Mar 19, In northeastern Congo
22 people were hacked to death.
(AP, 3/21/03)
2003 Mar 19, Doctors in Hong Kong
reportedly identified the deadly pneumonia virus as belonging to the
paramyxoviridae family. The severe acute respiratory illness (SARS) had
killed at least 11 people and left hundreds ill. The outbreak is
believed to have began in southern China in November. Later reports
held that it could be a coronavirus, part of a group that cause the
common cold.
(SFC, 3/15/03, p.A8)(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A4)(WSJ,
4/3/03, p.B1)
2003 Mar 19, It was reported that
Iraq had some 10 million land mines.
(WSJ, 3/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 19, Boatloads of Nigerian
troops headed into the oil-rich Niger Delta on to put down days of
ethnic violence that has left dozens dead and disrupted multinational
oil operations.
(AP, 3/20/03)(SFC, 3/21/03, p.A9)
2003 Mar 19, EU officials found
electronic bugs in a building in Brussels where a summit was set to
open the next day. Belgian police suspected the US.
(WSJ, 3/20/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 19, In Palestine Mahmoud
Abbas accepted the new post of prime minister.
(SFC, 3/20/03, p.A13)
2003 Mar 19, Serbian lawmakers
forced 35 judges into retirement for failing to prosecute underworld
bosses.
(SFC, 3/20/03, p.A15)
2003 Mar 19, PM Tayyip Erdogan
said Turkey was preparing to open its airspace to US warplanes but
would not allow them access to airbases.
(AP, 3/19/03)
2003 Mar 20, Operation Iraqi
Freedom began with a few targeted strikes in Baghdad against Saddam
Hussein, targeting him personally with a barrage of cruise missiles and
bombs as a prelude to invasion. Iraq responded hours later, firing
missiles toward American troops positioned just across its border with
Kuwait. US Sec. of State Rumsfeld warned that the attack in Iraq would
be "of a force and scope and scale that is beyond what has been seen
before." A "shock and awe" strategy was planned based on a 1996 "rapid
dominance" strategy. The US seized $1.74 billion in frozen Iraqi assets
and declared it would be used for humanitarian purposes. Saddam Hussein
appeared on state-run television accusing the United States of a
"shameful crime" and urging his people to "draw your sword" against the
invaders. Iraq set fire to at least 10 oil wells.
(SFC, 3/20/03, p.W1)(SFC, 3/21/03, p.W11)(WSJ,
3/21/03, p.A1)(AP, 3/20/04)
2003 Mar 20, Hundreds of thousands
of people marched on American embassies in world capitals to protest
the war against Iraq.
(AP, 3/20/03)
2003 Mar 20, Some 600 US and
Romanian ground troops in Afghanistan began Operation Valiant Strike,
an intensified search for Taliban, al Qaeda and loyalists to Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar.
(SSFC, 3/23/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 20, Tornadoes hit rural
Georgia and 6 people were killed.
(SFC, 3/21/03, p.A7)
2003 Mar 20, Texas executed its
300th inmate since restoring the death penalty in 1982.
(WSJ, 3/21/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 20, In the Central
African Republic Gen. Francois Bozizea asked his fighters to hand over
their weapons to troops from neighboring Chad, prompting the insurgents
to accuse their leader of betraying them.
(AP, 3/21/03)
2003 Mar 20, China demanded that
military action against Iraq stop immediately and said the initial
attack was "violating the norms of international behavior."
(AP, 3/20/03)
2003 Mar 20, Fidel Castro's agents
arrested some of the government's leading critics in a crackdown that
has netted at least 65 dissidents accused of working with US diplomats
to undermine Cuba's socialist system.
(AP, 3/21/03)
2003 Mar 20, The Czech Interior
Ministry published a list of some 75,000 people identified as agents of
the former communist secret police, the STB.
(AP, 3/20/03)
2003 Mar 20, Norwegian police
arrested Mullah Krekar, the leader of a Kurdish guerrilla group
suspected of links to al-Qaida, on kidnapping charges.
(AP, 3/20/03)
2003 Mar 20, The Palestinian
Authority broke up a Hamas training session and a firefight followed
that killed one militant.
(SFC, 3/21/03, p.A15)
2003 Mar 20, In Serbia nearly
1,000 people were arrested in a crackdown on criminal groups following
the assassination of Serbian PM Zoran Djindjic.
(AP, 3/20/03)
2003 Mar 20, A suspected Tamil
Tiger rebel boat attacked and sank a vessel carrying Chinese fishermen
off eastern Sri Lanka, killing 17 people on board.
(AP, 3/21/03)
2003 Mar 20, Turkey's parliament
approved a motion allowing over-flights for US warplanes. Turkey
announced plans to send thousands of troops into Kurdish-controlled
northern Iraq.
(AP, 3/20/03)
2003 Mar 20, UN Sec. Gen'l. Kofi
Annan asked to be put in charge of a humanitarian program to aid Iraq.
(SFC, 3/21/03, p.W14)
2003 Mar 20-Apr 9, At least 1,700
Iraqi civilians were killed and over 8,000 injured in the battle for
Baghdad.
(SSFC, 5/18/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 21, The House approved a
$2.2 trillion budget embracing President Bush's tax-cutting plan.
(AP, 3/21/04)
2003 Mar 21, A young man from LA
visiting Las Vegas hit pay dirt, a world record $39 million on a slot
machine.
(AP, 3/22/03)
2003 Mar 21, A CH-46 Sea Knight
helicopter crashed in Kuwait and killed 12 British and 4 US soldiers.
US Marines captured the strategic port in the southern Iraqi city of
Umm Qasr.
(AP, 3/21/03)
2003 Mar 21, In the 3rd day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom the "shock and awe" air campaign began. 2 days
of US air attacks killed 4 civilians in Baghdad and left some 242
injured.
(SSFC, 3/23/03, p.W10)(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.W12)
2003 Mar 21, North Korea condemned
the US-led war on Iraq and said American war games in South Korea were
pushing the divided peninsula "to the brink of a nuclear war."
(AP, 3/21/03)
2003 Mar 21, A South African
commission that investigated the crimes of the era recommended
that the government pay compensation totaling $348 million to more than
21,000 victims of apartheid-era abuses.
(AP, 3/21/03)
2003 Mar 21, In Yemen police
clashed with anti-war demonstrators trying to storm the US Embassy,
leaving a policeman and protester dead.
(AP, 3/21/03)
2003 Mar 22, Many thousands of
people marched in cities around the world or demonstrated outside U.S.
military bases, but the demonstrations were far smaller than earlier
protests.
(AP, 3/22/04)
2003 Mar 22, U.S. forces reported
seizing a large weapons cache in Afghanistan.
(AP, 3/22/04)
2003 Mar 22, Scientists believe
they have found the virus responsible for the mystery SARS virus and
announced a test to diagnose it.
(AP, 3/23/03)
2003 Mar 22, In the 4th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom intermittent explosions were heard throughout
the day in Baghdad and by late afternoon at least 12 huge columns of
smoke could be seen rising from all along the southern horizon of the
city. US and British forces reached half way to Baghdad and British
forces were left surrounding Basra.
(AP, 3/22/03)(SSFC, 3/23/03, p.W1)
2003 Mar 22, A 4-man ITN TV crew
drove into a war zone near Az Zubayr, Iraq, and reporter Terry Lloyd
(50) was killed. 2 men went missing and one escaped.
(WSJ, 5/2/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 22, Two British Royal
Navy helicopters collided over the Persian Gulf, killing all 7 on board
including a US Navy officer.
(AP, 3/22/03)
2003 Mar 22, Burundi's hard-line
Hutu rebel group expressed satisfaction with its first round of peace
talks in Switzerland.
(AP, 3/22/03)
2003 Mar 22, Dozens of Chechen
rebels surrendered their weapons in a ceremony apparently designed to
promote harmony on the eve of a constitutional referendum.
(AP, 3/22/03)
2003 Mar 22, A gas explosion
killed 28 people and trapped 45 others in a coal mine in northern China.
(AP, 3/22/03)
2003 Mar 22, In eastern Congo an
overloaded ferry traveling between rebel-held ports sank in Lake
Tanganyika, killing 111 people. It was sailing in Burundian waters to
avoid rival tribal fighters.
(AP, 3/24/03)
2003 Mar 22, Thousands of angry
protesters from Japan to Greece marched Saturday against the US-led war
in Iraq.
(AP, 3/22/03)
2003 Mar 22, Sgt. Hasan Akbar, a
US soldier, threw grenades into 3 tents at Camp Pennsylvania, a 101st
Airborne command center in Kuwait, killing one fellow serviceman and
wounding 13. In 2005 Akbar was convicted of premeditated and attempted
murder. On April 28, 2005, Akbar was sentenced to death.
(AP, 3/23/03)(SFC, 4/22/05, p.A13)(SFC, 4/29/05,
p.A10)
2003 Mar 22, In Nigeria ethnic
militants threatened to blow up 11 multinational oil installations they
claimed to have captured in retaliation for military raids.
(AP, 3/22/03)
2003 Mar 23, In the 75th annual
Academy Awards "Chicago" won for Best Picture, Roman Polanski for best
director (The Pianist), Adrien Brody for best actor (The Pianist),
Nicole Kidman for best actress (The Hours), Chris Cooper for
best-supporting actor (Adaptation), and Catherine Zeta-Jones for best
supporting actress (Chicago).
(SFC, 3/24/03, p.C5)
2003 Mar 23, Michael Moore
criticized Pres. Bush and the US-led war in Iraq during his acceptance
speech at the Academy Awards, drawing a partial standing ovation and
some jeers from Hollywood's elite.
(AP, 3/24/03)
2003 Mar 23, A Maryland nurse died
5 days after being vaccinated for smallpox. A 2nd nurse died Mar 27.
(SFC, 3/26/03, p.A6)(SFC, 3/28/03, p.A7)
2003 Mar 23, Adrian O'Neill
Robinson (25) allegedly shot and killed his father (56) in Hamilton,
Georgia. He then kidnapped 2 nuns, one of whom was found 3 days later,
mutilated in a Norfolk, Va., parking lot. The other nun was found ok.
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.A7)
2003 Mar 23, US and allied Afghan
forces clashed with militiamen loyal to a renegade warlord in a battle
that left up to 10 rebels dead. A US Air Force helicopter on a mercy
mission to help 2 injured Afghan children crashed in southeastern
Afghanistan, killing all 6 people on board.
(AP, 3/24/03)
2003 Mar 23, In northern
Afghanistan flooding and heavy rains killed at least 11 people and
damaged hundreds of houses.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 23, In the 5th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom US-led warplanes and helicopters attacked
Republican Guard units defending Baghdad while ground troops advanced
to within 50 miles of the Iraqi capital. Pres. Bush put a $75 billion
price tag on a down payment for the war. The 507th Maintenance Company
was ambushed after it made a wrong turn into Nasiriya; 11 soldiers were
killed, seven were captured, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch. Lori
Piestewa (23) was killed, with the gruesome distinction of being the
first native American in the US army to be killed in combat. Lynch was
rescued on April 1, 2003.
(AP, 3/24/03)(SFC, 4/14/03,
p.A1)(www.nativeweb.org/weblog/piestewa/)(AP, 3/23/08)
2003 Mar 23, A US bomb struck a
bus at a service area in al-Rutba, Iraq, enroute from Baghdad to Syria.
5 people were killed.
(SFC, 3/25/03, p.W7)
2003 Mar 23, A British Royal Air
Force Tornado jet was shot down by a U.S. Patriot missile in the first
reported incident of "friendly" fire in Iraq.
(AP, 3/23/03)
2003 Mar 23, Arab nations called
for an emergency Security Council meeting to demand an end to the
US-led war against Iraq and the withdrawal of all invading forces.
(AP, 3/24/03)
2003 Mar 23, In the CAR Gen.
Francois Bozize said Abel Goumba (76), a veteran opposition leader,
will oversee daily operations in the government.
(AP, 3/23/03)
2003 Mar 23, A Chechen referendum
strongly approved a new constitution that confirmed Chechnya as part of
Russia and endorsed rules for electing a Chechen president and
parliament.
(AP, 3/23/03)(AP, 3/24/03)(SFC, 3/24/03, p.A11)
2003 Mar 23, Iraqi state
television showed two men said to have been the US crew of an Apache
helicopter forced down during heavy fighting in central Iraq. Iraqi
forces captured at least 5 soldiers of an Army maintenance company. US
Central Command reported 12 missing. About 20 Americans were captured
or killed at Nasiriyah.
(AP, 3/24/03)(SFC, 3/24/03, p.W1)(WSJ, 3/24/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 23, In Kashmir gunmen
shot to death Abdul Majid Dar, the former leader of Kashmir's largest
Islamic rebel group, in what may have been retribution for talks with
the Indian government.
(AP, 3/23/03)
2003 Mar 23, In Nicaragua the
party of President Enrique Bolanos abandoned him after months of
quarreling over the government's prosecution of his predecessor, a
fellow party member.
(AP, 3/24/03)
2003 Mar 23, Slovenes endorsed
membership in NATO and the European Union.
(AP, 3/23/03)(AP, 3/24/03)
2003 Mar 24, In the 6th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom US forces began strikes against the Medina
Division of the Republican Guard guarding Baghdad. Hussein appeared on
Iraqi TV as coalition forces held over 3,000 prisoners. 10 Marines were
killed in combat around Nasiriya.
(WSJ, 3/25/03, p.A1)(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.W12)(SSFC,
5/4/03, p.C2)
2003 Mar 24, The National
Transportation Safety Board concluded that Boeing 737 rudder problems
caused two fatal airline crashes and nearly triggered a third.
(AP, 3/24/04)
2003 Mar 24, In Texas a fire in a
sugar-cane field killed 5 illegal Mexican immigrants hiding there.
(WSJ, 3/25/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 24, Philip Yordan (88),
Oscar-winning writer, died in San Diego.
(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.A23)
2003 Mar 24, Al-Jazeera went live
with its English-based web site, for an alternative perspective from
Western media: (http://english.aljazeera.net)
(WSJ, 3/25/03, p.A12)
2003 Mar 24, Arab League foreign
ministers adopted a resolution that called for the US and Britain to
withdraw their troops from Iraq immediately and without conditions.
(AP, 3/25/03)
2003 Mar 24, In Brazil gunmen
killed Alexandre Martins de Castro Filho , a judge who focused on
organized crime, 10 days after another prominent judge was gunned down
in a similar slaying.
(AP, 3/25/03)
2003 Mar 24, British police
arrested Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky at the request of Russian
authorities. A charge alleged that between Jan. 1, 1994, and Dec. 31,
1995, he defrauded the Administration of Samara Region of 60 billion
rubles whilst being director of Logovaz.
(AP, 3/25/03)
2003 Mar 24, In Georgia Pres.
Shevardnadze confirmed that the US was flying U-2 spy planes over the
Pankisi Gorge area to help fight Chechen rebel infiltration.
(WSJ, 3/25/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 24, Saddam Hussein
appeared on Iraqi TV telling his nation that "victory is soon."
(SFC, 3/24/03, p.W1)
2003 Mar 24, Iraqi state
television showed two men said to have been the U.S. crew of an Apache
helicopter forced down during heavy fighting in central Iraq. Chief
Warrant Officer David Williams and Chief Warrant Officer Ronald D.
Young Junior spent three weeks in captivity before they were released
along with five other POWs.
(AP, 3/24/04)
2003 Mar 24, Israeli forces near
Hebron shot dead Ahmed Abahreh (14), who was throwing stones at an
Israeli armored vehicle.
(SFC, 3/25/03, p.A6)
2003 Mar 24, Suspected Islamic
militants in Indian army uniforms dragged 24 Hindus from their homes,
lined them up outside a temple and shot them to death in a remote
village in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
(AP, 3/24/03)
2003 Mar 24, Mexico City police
chief Marcelo Ebrard said that Leoluca Orlando, former mayor of
Palermo, Italy, will be hired to combat crime. His work will complement
Rudolph Giuliani's who hired on for $4.3 million.
(AP, 3/25/03)
2003 Mar 24, Russian officials
declared that the approval of a new constitution by Chechnya's voters
completely discredited the separatist cause, further dimming hopes that
the Kremlin would negotiate an end to the 3 1/2-year war.
(AP, 3/24/03)
2003 Mar 24, In Serbia Zvezdan
Jovanovic, a deputy commander of the Unit for Special Operations used
by the former Yugoslav president during the 1990s wars in Bosnia and
Croatia, was arrested for the murder of PM Zoran Djindjic.
(AP, 3/25/03)
2003 Mar 24, In Zimbabwe the
Zwakwana human rights said forces loyal to President Robert Mugabe
hunted down government opponents after a national strike, beating them
with iron bars and whips. At least 1 person was killed.
(AP, 3/24/03)
2003 Mar 25, Celine Dion opened a
three-year gig in the new $95 million Colosseum theater at Caesars
Palace.
(AP, 3/26/03)
2003 Mar 25, Pres. Bush issued an
order to delay the release of millions of historical documents for more
than 3 years and to ease reclassification of data deemed of possible
harm to national security.
(WSJ, 3/26/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 25, The Senate voted to
slash President Bush's proposed $726 billion tax-cutting package in
half, handing the president a defeat on the foundation of his plan to
awaken the nation's slumbering economy.
(AP, 3/25/04)
2003 Mar 25, Former Waterbury,
Conn., Mayor Philip Giordano was convicted by a federal jury of
violating the civil rights of two preteen girls by sexually abusing
them. Giordano was later sentenced to 37 years in federal prison.
(AP, 3/25/04)
2003 Mar 25, The US Navy brought
in 2 specially trained bottle-nosed Atlantic dolphins to help ferret
out mines in the approaches of the port of Umm Qasr.
(AP, 3/26/03)
2003 Mar 25, In the 7th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom US aircraft dropped more than 2,000
precision-guided bombs on Iraq since the war's start. The "smart" bombs
were produced for a relatively cheap $20,000 each. Sandstorms slowed
coalition movement and air missions. US officials reported 150-200
Iraqi soldiers were killed near Najaf.
(AP, 3/25/03)(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.W12)(SSFC, 5/4/03,
p.C2)
2003 Mar 25, Six satellite jamming
devices, which Iraq was using to try to thwart American precision
guided weapons, were destroyed in the last 2 nights.
(AP, 3/25/03)
2003 Mar 25, Some 150-500 Iraqi
fighters were killed in fighting east of Najaf.
(AP, 3/25/03)(SFC, 3/26/03, p.W1)
2003 Mar 25, A light plane
carrying 3 Americans crashed in southern Colombia while searching for 3
other Americans captured by rebels last month.
(AP, 3/26/03)
2003 Mar 25, Muhamed Sacirbegovic
(46), former Bosnia ambassador to the US (1992-2000) was arrested in
NYC. The Bosnian government has accused him of stealing more than $2.4
million, about $1.8 million from the nation's Investment Fund Ministry
and more than $600,000 from the account of Bosnia's representation at
the UN.
(AP, 3/26/03)
2003 Mar 25, Israeli troops killed
2 wanted Hamas militants. Sprayed bullets also killed a girl (10). A
West Bank boy (14) throwing stones was shot dead.
(SFC, 3/26/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 25, Philippine troops
killed a senior commander of the Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf group in a
raid on his hideout.
(AP, 3/26/03)
2003 Mar 25, Saudi Arabia
contacted the United States and Iraq with a peace proposal and was
still awaiting a response.
(AP, 3/25/03)
2003 Mar 25, In Thailand police
said they shot and killed 42 people during a 7-week-old crackdown on
drugs that has drawn protest from human rights groups. Nearly 400 drug
makers and more than 12,000 dealers were arrested.
(AP, 3/26/03)
2003 Mar 25, In Uganda a gang of
ivory poachers killed six adult elephants and one calf in a "gruesome
massacre" in Queen Elizabeth National Park. The poachers used acid to
remove the tusks.
(AP, 4/4/03)
2003 Mar 26, The Senate approved a
$2.2 trillion budget that provided less than half the $726 billion in
tax cuts President Bush wanted.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2003 Mar 26, In the 8th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom Baghdad officials said two cruise missiles hit
a residential area, killing 14 people. Iraq said 36 civilians were
killed and 215 wounded in US airstrikes on Baghdad. Some 1,000 US
paratroopers jumped into northern Iraq as sandstorms eased.
(AP, 3/26/03)(AP, 3/27/03)(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.W12)
2003 Mar 26, Federal energy
regulators (FERC) validated California claims to 2000-2001 overcharges
for energy and said the state is owed $3.3 billion in refunds from
Enron and 5 other energy firms. California called for $9 billion.
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 26, Daniel Patrick
Moynihan (76), former NY Senator (1976-2000) and scholar, died. He
wrote or edited some 18 books.
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 26, In Afghanistan
suspected Taliban rebels attacked a government checkpoint and 13 people
were killed.
(WSJ, 3/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 26, The Burundian army
attacked a rebel stronghold in a Kibira forest with mortars and
artillery, killing 68 insurgents. Rebels said only 2 fighters were
killed.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 26, India test-fired a
short-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, and Pakistan
immediately announced it had tested a similar missile.
(AP, 3/26/03)
2003 Mar 26, In India gunmen
fatally shot a senior Hindu nationalist in western Gujarat state.
(AP, 3/26/03)
2003 Mar 26, Pirates with
automatic weapons stormed an Indonesian tanker ship in the Malacca
Strait and escaped with equipment and cash.
(AP, 3/29/03)
2003 Mar 26, NATO officially
signed up 7 eastern European nations to become members: Bulgaria,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 26, In Nigeria Ijaw
militants battling soldiers and tribal enemies in the oil-rich delta
region called for a cease-fire after state officials agreed to support
their political demands.
(AP, 3/26/03)
2003 Mar 26, In South Korea a late
night fire in a grade school dormitory killed eight children.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 26, Interpol issued an
international call for the arrest of former Peruvian President Alberto
Fujimori on charges of murder and kidnapping in Peru.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2003 Mar 27, Pres. Bush and
British Prime Minister Tony Blair met to assess the progress of the war
in Iraq.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, The Bush
administration seized $1.62 billion in Iraqi assets already frozen in
the US. The money would be used to help rebuild Iraq once Saddam
Hussein is ousted.
(AP, 3/28/03)
2003 Mar 27, Richard Perle quit as
head of the Pentagon advisory board amid allegations of conflicts of
interests with his business deals.
(WSJ, 3/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 27, It was reported that
the SARS disease had killed 50 people and infected some 1,300 in 13
countries.
(WSJ, 3/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 27, Paul Zindel (66),
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, died in New York.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2003 Mar 27, In Afghanistan
Ricardo Munguia (39), a Red Cross water engineer from El Salvador, was
killed by Taliban gunmen.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A5)(Reuters 3/28/03)
2003 Mar 27, In Colombia FARC land
mines killed 11 soldiers near Aracataca, the birthplace of Nobel
laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, EU governments agreed
to ban single-hulled oil tankers carrying heavy fuel in an attempt to
reduce the risk of slicks.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, France introduced a
new terrorism alert system, with 4 color-coded levels to make the
national warning plan more flexible and understandable.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, In the 9th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom a British armored unit destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks
trying to break out of the besieged city of Basra. A sea-borne relief
operation was postponed after discovering Iraqi mines in the shipping
channel leading to the recently captured Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Heavy
bombing on Baghdad destroyed a main telephone exchange.
(AP, 3/27/03)(SFC, 3/28/03, p.W1)
2003 Mar 27, In Israel Israeli
forces killed 3 Palestinian police officers in Beit Hanoun, Gaza.
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.A10)
2003 Mar 27, in Kyrgyzstan a fire
engulfed a crowded passenger bus, killing 21 victims, believed to
have been Chinese vendors of Uighur ethnicity. Robbery was suspected.
(AP, 3/27/03)(AP, 3/28/03)
2003 Mar 27, Mexican federal
agents killed 2 suspected drug runners in a shootout near the Texas
border.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, In Yangon, Myanmar, a
bomb went off in front of a state telecommunications office, killing at
least one person and wounding three as the country marked Armed Forces
Day.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, Russia's Evgeni
Plushenko won his 2nd World Figure Skating Championships title, edging
American Tim Goebel.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2003 Mar 27, In Serbia Milan
Lukovic and Dusan Spasojevic, Zemun Clan leaders and suspects in the
Zoran Djindjic assassination, were killed as they resisted arrest.
(SFC, 3/28/03, p.A12)
2003 Mar 27, In Zimbabwe
opposition leaders urged the nation's soldiers and police to disobey
orders to crush any show of dissent against the government.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 28, In the 10th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom the biggest bombs dropped on Baghdad so far,
two 4,700-pound "bunker busters," struck a communications tower. In the
south, Iraqi fighters defending the besieged city of Basra fired on
hundreds of civilians trying to flee. The British supply ship Sir
Galahad docked at the port of Umm Qasr. The Bush administration said
fighting might not be over for months. At least 58 people were killed
in a crowded market in northwest Baghdad by what local officials called
a coalition bombing. A US pilot was heard saying "I'm going to be
sick," then "we're in jail, dude," after firing on the British convoy
in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull
was killed by American pilots.
(AP, 3/28/03)(SFC, 3/29/03, p.W1)(AP, 2/6/07)(Econ,
2/10/07, p.58)
2003 Mar 28, Chechen rebels killed
six Russian soldiers and two riot police.
(AP, 3/29/03)
2003 Mar 28, In Hong Kong at least
58 more people became sick with symptoms of SARS. 11 Hong Kong deaths
were on the disease.
(SFC, 3/29/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 28, In Jammu-Kashmir
suspected Islamic militants attacked and mutilated 5 Kashmiri Muslim
villagers, accusing them of being police informants.
(AP, 3/28/03)
2003 Mar 28, Japan's first spy
satellites were blasted into orbit, causing an angry North Korea to
warn the move could spark an arms race in the region.
(AP, 3/28/03)
2003 Mar 28, The UN Security
Council voted unanimously to extend the UN assistance mission in
Afghanistan for a year.
(AP, 3/28/03)
2003 Mar 29, Michelle Kwan became
only the third American to win five World Figure Skating Championships,
after Dick Button and Carol Heiss.
(AP, 3/29/04)
2003 Mar 29, Pres. Bush sought to
marshal the nation's resolve to withstand more casualties, saying
further sacrifice must be expected.
(AP, 3/29/03)
2003 Mar 29, A rented Ford
Econoline 3-350 crashed on I-15 in southern California and 5 women
enroute to a retreat were killed. Families in 2004 sued Ford alleging
negligence.
(SFC, 8/4/04, p.B5)
2003 Mar 29, In the 11th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom a suicide bomber driving a taxi killed four
American soldiers at a checkpoint near Najaf, Iraq. US jets destroyed a
building in Basra where paramilitary fighters were meeting and 200 were
reported killed.
(AP, 3/29/03)(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.C3)
2003 Mar 29, Two US special forces
soldiers were killed and another wounded in an ambush in southern
Afghanistan. Fighting there killed four Taliban with 6 captured.
(AP, 3/29/03)
2003 Mar 29, A gamma ray burst was
detected as a giant star exploded and collapsed into a black hole some
2 billion light years away in the direction of the constellation Leo.
(SFC, 4/28/03, A8)
2003 Mar 29, The government of
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, Bolivia's president, was on the verge of
collapse. His ratings were the lowest of any South American leader, and
he admitted coups were brewing beneath him.
(AP, 3/30/03)
2003 Mar 29, In El Salvador a
cargo truck carrying dozens of passengers went out of control and
flipped over, killing at least 12 people and injuring 42.
(AP, 3/30/03)
2003 Mar 29, A low-flying Iraqi
missile avoided the detection of US defense systems and landed just off
the coast of Kuwait City, shattering windows at the seaside Souq Sharq
shopping mall.
(AP, 3/29/03)(SFC, 3/29/03, p.W5)
2003 Mar 29, Israeli troops shot a
killed a 17-year-old Palestinian throwing stone at troops near Nablus.
(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.A9)
2003 Mar 29, In Mexico a small
government plane crashed in the mountains of southern Mexico, killing
all five people aboard. Passengers included Porfirio Encino Hernandez,
state sec. for Indian affairs; his son and brother; Berenice Lopez, the
daughter of former Gov. Javier Lopez; and pilot Guadalupe Gil.
(AP, 4/1/03)
2003 Mar 29, Nigeria police shot
and killed seven members of the Movement for the Actualization of the
Sovereign State of Biafra and arrested more than 20 to forestall a
rally where they planned to make a symbolic declaration of
independence. The leader of the failed Biafra state, Emeka Odumegwu
Ojukwu, a leading opposition politician, lost in the April, 2003,
presidential elections that were widely alleged to have been rigged.
(AP, 3/30/03)(AP, 3/23/05)
2003 Mar 29, In the Philippines
troops clashed with communist guerrillas in a hilly area near the
capital, and at least 24 were people killed.
(AP, 3/30/03)
2003 Mar 29, Italian Dr. Carlo
Urbani (46), a WHO expert on communicable diseases, died of SARS in
Thailand, where he was being treated after becoming infected while
working in Vietnam. Urbani was the 1st doctor to identify SARS.
(AP, 3/29/03)(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.A6)
2003 Mar 29, A Turkish man who had
hijacked a Turkish Airlines flight the day before was persuaded by
Turkey's prime minister to release his 204 hostages after the plane
landed in Athens, Greece.
(AP, 3/29/04)
2003 Mar 30, In the 12th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom an Iraqi general, captured by British forces in
southern Iraq, was pressed to provide information. A British TV
correspondent covering the war in Iraq died after apparently falling
from a hotel roof.
(AP, 3/30/03)
2003 Mar 30, Students in China
staged a rare state-sanctioned protest as hundreds of thousands around
the world staged another day of rallies denouncing the US led war in
Iraq.
(AP, 3/30/03)
2003 Mar 30, In Jakarta,
Indonesia, tens of thousands of protesters marched upon the U.S.
Embassy chanting "America Imperialist, No. 1 terrorist!"
(AP, 3/30/03)
2003 Mar 30, In Netanya, Israel,
Rami Ghanem (20), a Palestinian suicide bomber, exploded near the
London Café and at least 30 people were injured. The Islamic
Jihad called the attack "Palestine's gift to the heroic people of Iraq."
(SFC, 3/31/03, p.A1)(AP, 3/30/04)
2003 Mar 31, In the 13th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom US-led troops fought pitched battles with
Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard within 50 miles of the capital. B-1,
B-2 and B-52 bombers struck communication and command centers in
Baghdad, and cruise missiles set Iraq's Information Ministry ablaze.
Casualties from the war to date US total: 40 dead, 7 captured, 18
missing; British total: 25 dead. Of 8,000 precision bombs dropped since
the war began, 3,000 fell in the last 3 days. Port operations at Umm
Qasr looked to be delayed for weeks.
(AP, 3/31/03)(WSJ, 4/1/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 31, US troops between
Karbala and Najaf shot and killed 10 Iraqi civilians including women
and children, when the driver of a van failed to stop at a checkpoint.
The Pentagon reported 7 killed.
(AP, 4/1/03)(SFC, 4/1/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 31, NBC said it severed
its relations with reporter Peter Arnett after he told Iraqi television
that the US war plan against Saddam Hussein had failed. Arnett was
quickly hired by London's Daily Mirror.
(AP, 3/31/03)(WSJ, 4/1/03, p.B1)
2003 Mar 31, Harold Scott
MacDonald Coxeter (b.1907), British-born mathematician, died. He
pioneered the study of higher-dimensional shapes called polytopes. In
2006 Siobhan Roberts authored “King of Infinite Space.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Scott_MacDonald_Coxeter)
2003 Mar 31, Britain and the US
signed a new Extradition Treaty.
(http://tinyurl.com/hbdpj)(http://eurealitshome.com/blog/?p=1086)
2003 Mar 31, The DJIA fell 153 to
7992.
(SFC, 4/1/03, p.C1)
2003 Mar 31, In Bolivia rescue
officials struggled to reach victims buried by a landslide that roared
through Chima, a gold-mining town in Bolivia's tropical lowlands,
killing an estimated 300-400 people.
(AP, 4/1/03)(SFC, 4/1/03, p.A8)(AP, 4/2/03)
2003 Mar 31, Hong Kong authorities
quarantined more than 200 other residents in an apartment block in an
effort to contain the SARS virus.
(AP, 3/31/03)
2003 Mar 31, In eastern Indonesia
mudslides triggered by flash floods on Flores Island killed 48 people
with 28 reported missing.
(AP, 4/2/03)(AP, 4/5/03)
2003 Mar 31, In Tehran, Iran, a
pickup truck with extra fuel crashed into the British Embassy in an
apparent suicide attack. Police called it an accident.
(SFC, 4/1/03, p.A3)
2003 Mar 31, In Macedonia the EU
began its first military operation by taking over peacekeeping duties
from NATO.
(AP, 3/31/03)
2003 Mar 31, In southern Pakistan
gunmen in paramilitary uniforms shot dead 12 people and wounded 26
others in an attack linked to a tribal feud.
(AP, 3/31/03)
2003 Mar, Hooters Air started
flying between Atlanta and Myrtle Beach.
(Econ, 6/28/03, p.65)
2003 Mar, The new $151 million
Asian Art Museum, the Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Arts and culture,
opened in San Francisco’s Old Main Library. Johnson Bogart (1928-2008),
a member of the Asian Art Commission since 1992, led the successful
move.
(SFC, 11/28/96, p.C1)(SFC, 8/14/08, p.B5)
2003 Mar, In the CAR Gen. Francois
Bozize took power in a 2nd coup following 5 months of conflict during
which Pres. Patasse had enlisted support of rebel troops from the
Congo, led by Jean-Pierre Bemba, along with mercenaries from Chad and
Libya. Sexual violence during this period was particularly brutal.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.52)
2003 Mar, In 2007 British media
reported that Iran had offered to cut off aid and support for the
Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas, and
promised full transparency on its nuclear program in a secret letter to
the US soon after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Iran also offered to use
its influence to support stabilization in Iraq, and in return asked for
a halt in hostile American behavior, an abolition of all sanctions, and
the pursuit and repatriation of members of the Mujahedeen Khalq
(People's Mujahedeen MKO). Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to
Colin Powell, said: “As soon as it got to the Vice-President's (Dick
Cheney) office, the old mantra of 'we don't talk to evil' ...
reasserted itself."
(AFP, 1/18/07)
2003 Mar, Majid Khan, a 1999
graduate of a Baltimore-area high school, was seized in Pakistan and
held until 2006 in secret CIA custody. In September 2006, US
authorities transferred him and other high-value detainees to
Guantanamo, where they may be charged and face prosecution under a new
military tribunal system.
(AP, 12/9/07)
2003 Mar, Spain’s Supreme Court
outlawed the radical Batasuna party linked to ETA.
(AP, 3/22/06)
2003 Mar, In Turkey villagers from
the southeastern town of Sanliurfa hurled eggs and stones at a group of
about a dozen US soldiers going to retrieve pieces of Navy-fired
Tomahawk missile, which was intended for Iraq but crashed into an empty
field. In 2006 charges 13 villagers were acquitted of attacking the US
troops.
(AP, 12/27/06)
2003 Mar-Apr, US warplanes dropped
firebombs similar to napalm on Iraqi troops to clear the way for troops
headed to Baghdad.
(SFC, 8/6/03, p.A3)
2003 Mar-2004 Jul, In Germany 29
patients died at a Bavarian hospital. The deaths at Sonthofen of 17
female and 12 male patients (aged 40-94) were caused by a male nurse.
He used a mixture of the sedative midazolam, the anesthetic etomidate
and the muscle relaxant lysthenon to kill the patients. In 2005 the
nurse was charged with murder.
(AP, 9/15/05)
Go to April 2003
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com