Timeline of 2003 July - September
Return to home
2003 Jul 1,
The US planned to suspend $48 million in aid to some 35 countries
for failing to meet this day's deadline for exempting Americans from
prosecution before the new UN int'l. war crimes tribunal.
(SFC, 7/2/03, p.A9)
2003 Jul 1, Bishop Sean
O'Malley was named by Pope John Paul II the new archbishop of
Boston, succeeding Cardinal Bernard Law, who'd resigned in the wake
of a clerical sex abuse scandal.
(AP, 7/1/04)
2003 Jul 1, In Missouri an
employee shot and killed three co-workers and wounded four others at
the Modine Manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Jefferson City,
then drove into town and killed himself in a confrontation with
police.
(AP, 7/2/03)
2003 Jul 1, Herbie Mann (73),
jazz flutist, died in Pecos, NM. He was born Apr 16, 1930, as
Herbert Jay Solomon in Brooklyn, NY.
(SFC, 7/3/03, p.A2)
2003 Jul 1, In Iraq US troops
killed 4 people who failed to stop at checkpoints.
(WSJ, 7/2/03, p.A1)(SFC, 7/2/03, p.A14)
2003 Jul 1, At a summit,
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas
rededicated themselves to peace efforts and spoke of a shared future
for their peoples.
(AP, 7/1/04)
2003 Jul 1, In Hong Kong the
"Article 23" measures targeting crimes against the state drew
hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in a protest that
overshadowed the 6th anniversary of the handover of the territory
from Britain to China.
(AP, 7/1/03)(WSJ, 7/2/03, p.A8)
2003 Jul 1, Roman Abramovich,
Russian billionaire and governor of Chukotka, bought England’s
Chelsea football club in a deal worth £140m ($233m).
(WSJ, 1/10/07,
p.A14)(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3036838.stm)
2003 Jul 2, The US was reported
to be sending nearly 250,000 metric tons of wheat to Ethiopia to
help ease the country's hunger crisis.
(AP, 7/2/03)
2003 Jul 2, The film "Ken
Parks" by Larry Clark and Edward Lachman received an illegal public
screening in Balmain, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. The film was
about the dysfunctional lives of skateboarders in the suburbs of
Visalia, Ca., and was banned due to its explicit sex and violence.
(SFC, 7/7/03, p.D2)
2003 Jul 2, Vancouver, Canada,
was awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics.
(AP, 7/2/04)
2003 Jul 2, In southern India a
train engine and two coaches fell off a bridge and landed on a fish
market and parked taxis, killing at least 18.
(AP, 7/2/03)
2003 Jul 2, A group of 650
Kenyan women won the right to sue the British Ministry of Defense
for rapes by British soldiers that took place over a 26 year period
beginning in 1977.
(SFC, 7/3/03, p.A14)
2003 Jul 2, Palestinian police
moved into the West Bank town of Bethlehem, the second area handed
over by Israel under a U.S.-backed Mideast peace plan.
(AP, 7/2/03)
2003 Jul 2, Russian authorities
detained Platon Lebedev, a close partner of Russia's richest man,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, on suspicion of defrauding the state of $283
million in the 1994 privatization of the Apatit fertilizer company.
(AP, 7/3/03)
2003 Jul 2, The WHO said
Toronto was no longer SARS infected, leaving Taiwan as the only
place in the world where the disease was not yet fully under
control.
(AP, 7/2/03)
2003 Jul 3, The US jobless rate
was reported to have surged to a nine-year high in June as employers
cut 30,000 workers from their payrolls.
(AP, 7/3/03)
2003 Jul 3, Astronomers said
they have found a Jupiter-like body circling a distant star, dubbed
HD 70642 some 94 light years from Earth, in a planetary system like
ours. The finding was presented at a conference at the Paris
Astrophysics Institute.
(AP, 7/4/03)
2003 Jul 3, The US military
commander in Europe was ordered to begin planning for possible
American intervention in Liberia.
(AP, 7/3/03)
2003 Jul 3, London's Trafalgar
Square reopened to the public after a $42 million facelift.
(AP, 7/3/03)
2003 Jul 3, Tens of thousands
of South Korean auto and metal workers staged a half-day walkout to
demand a 40-hour workweek and better working conditions. Most people
worked half a day on Saturdays.
(AP, 7/3/03)
2003 Jul 3, Indonesia's
military said it killed 15 insurgents in new fighting in Aceh
province, and the rebels said they have detained two local
journalists.
(AP, 7/3/03)
2003 Jul 3, The US government
put a $25 million bounty on Saddam Hussein and $15 million on his
sons. US troops killed 11 Iraqis who ambushed a convoy outside
Baghdad.
(AP, 7/3/03)(AP, 7/4/03)
2003 Jul 3, Yuri Shchekochikhin
(b.1950), a deputy editor for Russia’s Novaya Gazeta and member of
parliament, died of a mysterious allergic reaction. He had long
campaigned against Boris Yeltsin's war in Chechnya. Friends and
relatives were convinced that he was poisoned.
(WSJ, 12/8/06, p.A12)
2003 Jul 3, In Suweir, Saudi
Arabia, Turki Nasser al-Dandani, the top suspect wanted in the May
12 Riyadh suicide bombing, was killed along with three other
militants in a gunbattle when police raided their hideout.
(AP, 7/3/03)
2003 Jul 3, Slovakia's
parliament approved an amendment to make abortion legal until the
24th week of pregnancy.
(AP, 7/3/03)
2003 Jul 4, President Bush
visited Dayton, Ohio, to praise the work of U.S. troops and
celebrate the 100th anniversary of flight in the hometown of the
Wright brothers.
(AP, 7/4/04)
2003 Jul 4, Los Angeles Lakers
guard Kobe Bryant was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault after
a woman accused him of sexual misconduct at a hotel near Vail, Colo.
(AP, 7/4/04)
2003 Jul 4, US forces raided a
Turkish special forces office in northern Iraq and detained 11
soldiers on reports that Turks were plotting to kill the governor of
the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
(AP, 7/5/03)
2003 Jul 4, Barry White (58), a
singer and songwriter whose rich bass crooning stirred romance in
the hearts of a generation of fans, died in Los Angeles. His songs
included "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe" (1974).
(SFC, 7/5/03, p.A20)
2003 Jul 4, Manuel Gehring (44)
shot and killed his 2 children, Philip (11) and Sarah (14),
following a dispute with his wife in Concord, NH. He was later
arrested in Gilroy, Ca. He confessed to police that he shot and
killed his 2 children in New Hampshire and buried them in the
Midwest. In 2005 authorities found the bodies of the 2 children
buried off I-80 in Ohio. Gehring committed suicide in his jail cell
on February 19, 2004 at the Merrimack County Jail in Boscawen, New
Hampshire.
(SFC, 8/1/03, p.A3)(SSFC, 12/4/05,
p.A22)(http://tinyurl.com/62dfka)
2003 Jul 4, A voice purported
to be Saddam Hussein's, aired on the Arab television station
Al-Jazeera, said he is in Iraq directing attacks on American forces
and called on Iraqis to help the resistance against the US-led
occupation.
(AP, 7/4/03)(SFC, 7/5/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 4, In Algeria
suspected Islamic militants killed Lawmaker Rabah Radja and three
other people at a roadblock east of the capital.
(AP, 7/5/03)
2003 Jul 4, Landslides in
central China caused by torrential rains killed 21 people as river
waters ran at their highest level in more than a decade.
(AP, 7/6/03)
2003 Jul 4, A coal mine
explosion in northeastern China killed 22 people and injured 6
others.
(AP, 7/6/03)
2003 Jul 4, Tung Chee-hwa, Hong
Kong's leader, withdrew parts of an anti-subversion bill that
triggered massive street protests.
(AP, 7/5/03)
2003 Jul 4, Ivory Coast's
government and rebel officials declared an official end to the civil
war, 9 months after fighting erupted following a failed attempt to
oust Pres. Laurent Gbagbo.
(AP, 7/4/03)
2003 Jul 4, In
Indian-controlled Kashmir suspected Islamic guerrillas tossed a
grenade and opened fire at a meeting between a minister and health
officials, killing 2 people and wounding 28.
(AP, 7/5/03)
2003 Jul 4, Liberia's President
Charles Taylor, under US pressure to quit, said he had agreed to
step down. A senior Nigerian official said Taylor had accepted an
offer of asylum.
(AP, 7/4/03)
2003 Jul 4, In Mexico gunmen in
Las Choapas, Veracruz, killed a man believed to be a migrant
trafficker and then fatally shot four bystanders, including a
12-year-old boy, apparently to avoid leaving witnesses.
(AP, 7/5/03)
2003 Jul 4, In Quetta,
Pakistan, 3 assassins attacked a Shiite Muslim mosque and killed 44
worshippers during prayers. Angry Shiites rioted in the streets
burning cars and tires.
(SFC, 7/5/03, p.A1)(AP, 7/6/03)(SSFC, 7/6/03,
p.A6)
2003 Jul 4, The 180-nation
world Radio Communication Conference in Geneva planned to approve an
expansion of the band for wireless local area networks (Wi-Fi) by
455 megahertz.
(WSJ, 7/3/03, p.B4)
2003 Jul 5, Serena Williams
beat sister Venus for her 2nd straight Wimbledon title.
(AP, 7/5/04)
2003 Jul 5, Caribbean leaders
agreed to establish a commission like the European Union to oversee
their 15-member, single market economy, allowing the free movement
of goods, services and professional workers.
(AP, 7/6/03)
2003 Jul 5, In Ramadi, Iraq, an
explosion struck a ceremony for Iraqi policemen graduating from US
training, killing at least seven recruits and wounding dozens. In
Baghdad a British TV journalist was shot dead near the national
museum.
(AP, 7/5/03)(WSJ, 7/7/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 5, In Kuwait Islamists
and supporters of the royal-led Cabinet kept their grip the all-male
parliament in elections, while liberals urging voting rights for
women suffered major losses.
(AP, 7/6/03)
2003 Jul 5, Police in Namibia
reported the recent death of N!xau, the diminutive bushman
catapulted to international stardom in the film "The Gods Must Be
Crazy" — he was thought to be about 59 years old.
(AP, 7/5/04)
2003 Jul 5, In Russia 2 women
suicide bombers blew themselves up at a giant rock festival in
suburban Moscow, leaving 14 victims killed.
(AP, 7/6/08)
2003 Jul 5, Delegates at a
Somali peace conference agreed to create a federal government.
(AP, 7/6/03)
2003 Jul 5, The WHO removed
Taiwan from its list of SARS-infected areas and declared a
provisional victory over the epidemic, which had killed 812 people
over 5 continents. The economic losses from SARS was later estimated
at about $200 billion. SARS was later classified as one of a number
of zoonoses, i.e. diseases that come from animals.
(SSFC, 7/6/03, p.A3)(Econ, 11/19/05, p.84)
2003 Jul 6, Roger Federer
became the first Swiss man to win a Grand Slam title, defeating Mark
Philippoussis 7-6 (5), 6-2, 7-6 (3) in the Wimbledon final.
(AP, 7/6/04)
2003 Jul 6, Joseph Wilson,
former American ambassador, criticized the Bush administration for
the way it used intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. He alleged
that Pres. Bush had falsely accused Iraq of trying to buy uranium
from Niger. Two White House officials soon called at least 6
Washington journalists and told them that Wilson’s wife, Valerie
Plame, was an undercover CIA agent who had worked in Niger. A State
Dept. memo was soon sent to Colin Powell on how Wilson got sent to
Niger and the role of his wife.
(Econ, 8/21/04, p.28)(SFC, 7/16/05, p.A4)
2003 Jul 6, Dennis Schmitt and
5 companions stepped on a 120-foot-long pile of dirt at 83°42’
latitude, Earth’s farthest north piece of known land. The Arctic
site was 432 miles from the North Pole and under the jurisdiction of
Greenland. In 2004 Danish authorities discounted the find in favor
of a larger island called Kaffklubben.
(SFC, 6/17/04, p.B1)(SFC, 6/18/04, p.B10)
2003 Jul 6, Buddy Ebsen (95),
Hollywood actor who achieved stardom and riches in the television
series "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Barnaby Jones," died.
(AP, 7/7/03)
2003 Jul 6, Kathleen Raine
(95), a poet and scholar whose verse explored the realms of nature
and the spirit, died in London. "Stone and Flower" (1943),
illustrated by Barbara Hepworth, was her first published collection,
followed by "Living in Time" (1946) and "The Pythoness" (1949).
(AP, 7/10/03)
2003 Jul 6, Corsicans voted in
a historic referendum to give local officials more say in running
the Mediterranean island, an attempt to end years of attacks by
separatists fighting French rule.
(AP, 7/6/03)
2003 Jul 6, In Liberia Pres.
Charles Taylor announced that he would leave the country and accept
refuge in Nigeria.
(SFC, 7/7/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 6, Mexican voters
issued a severe judgment on Pres. Vicente Fox's first three years in
office, electing another divided Congress in which his party will
have fewer seats and increasing the power of the former ruling party
and the leftist opposition.
(AP, 7/7/03)
2003 Jul 6, The annual Wife
Carrying World Championship took place in Sonkajarvi, Finland. An
Estonian team was again favored to win.
(WSJ, 7/2/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 7, Hilary Lunke won
the U.S. Women's Open.
(AP, 7/7/04)
2003 Jul 7, Pres. Bush departed
for a 5-country African tour. In 2007 Ari Fleischer, former White
House press secretary, said he had lunch with Scooter Libby on this
day and was told by Libby that Ambassador Wilson had been sent to
Africa by his wife, Valerie Plame, who worked for the CIA. Wilson
had criticized the Bush administration the previous day for the way
it used intelligence to justify the war in Iraq.
(SFC, 7/7/03, p.A8)(SFC, 1/30/07, p.A3)
2003 Jul 7, A federal judge
approved a settlement fining WorldCom $750 million for its
$11-billion accounting scandal.
(AP, 7/7/04)
2003 Jul 7, A chunk of foam
insulation fired at shuttle wing parts blew open a gaping 16-inch
hole, yielding what one member of the Columbia investigation team
said was the "smoking gun" proving what brought down the spaceship
on Feb 1.
(AP, 7/7/04)
2003 Jul 7, The CDC confirmed
the year's 1st case of West Nile Virus, which killed 284 in the US
in 2002.
(SFC, 7/8/03, p.A6)
2003 Jul 7, NASA's 2nd Mars
lander, named Opportunity, was launched.
(SFC, 7/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 7, In Corsica
explosions rocked vacation homes owned by mainland French in new
nationalist violence a day after Corsicans rejected a plan designed
to set up a single executive body to run Corsican affairs.
(AP, 7/7/03)
2003 Jul 7, In Indonesia
gunbattles between soldiers and rebels in Aceh province left 18
insurgents dead, and the bodies of five civilians were discovered in
the region.
(AP, 7/8/03)
2003 Jul 7, In northwestern
Tanzania a bus rolled several times after one of its front tires
burst, killing at least 19 people and injuring 23 others.
(AP, 7/8/03)
2003 Jul 8, Pres. Bush met with
Pres. Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal. Bush visited Senegal's notorious
Goree Island, for several centuries a processing station for African
slaves bound in chains for the Western Hemisphere.
(SFC, 7/7/03, p.A8)(AP, 7/8/03)
2003 Jul 8, Richard Armitage,
former Deputy Sec. of State, told Robert Novak about Valerie Plame.
This information was only made public in 2006 when Richard Armitage
said he had confessed this to the FBI on Oct 1, 2003.
(SFC, 8/29/06, p.A2)
2003 Jul 8, In Meridian, Miss.,
Doug Williams (48), a white factory worker known as a racist who
talked about murdering others opened fire with a shotgun and a rifle
at a Lockheed Martin plant, killing four blacks and one white before
committing suicide.
(AP, 7/8/03)(SFC, 7/9/03, p.A6)
2003 Jul 8, Joanie Harper (39),
her 3 children aged 2 months to 4 years, and her mother, were shot
and killed in Bakersfield, Ca. Husband Vincent E. Brothers (41), a
Bakersfield teacher and administrator, was arrested and released,
but remained a prime suspect. In May, 2007, Brothers was convicted.
On Sep 27 he was sentenced to death for the murders.
(SFC, 7/9/03, p.A13)(SFC, 7/11/03, p.A17)(SFC,
9/28/07, p.B12)
2003 Jul 8, Lewis Coser (89),
leftist sociologist, died. His books included "American Communist
Party: A Critical History (1919-1957)" (1958), and "Men of Ideas: A
Sociologist's View" (1966).
(SSFC, 7/13/03, p.A27)
2003 Jul 8, In Bangladesh a
ferry, with an estimated 750 passengers, sank at the confluence of
the Padma, Meghna and Dakatia rivers about 40 miles south of the
capital, Dhaka. Some 220 survivors were counted.
(AP, 7/9/03)
2003 Jul 8, In Burundi Hutu
rebels fought their way into part of the capital, trading gun,
mortar and grenade fire with the Tutsi-dominated army. Thousands
fled their homes.
(AP, 7/8/03)
2003 Jul 8, Antonis Samarakis
(84), Greek writer and children's rights activist, died. His books
included the novel "Mistake" (1965).
(SFC, 8/11/03, p.A17)
2003 Jul 8, In Iraq Mizban
Khadr Hadi (No. 23), a high-ranking member of the Baath Party
regional command and Mahmud Diab al-Ahmed (No. 29), the former
interior minister, were taken into custody. The capture of Al-Ahmed
was reported in error. He surrendered Aug 8.
(AP, 7/9/03)(AP, 8/10/03)
2003 Jul 8, US military experts
arrived in Liberia to assess the need for help in the local civil
war.
(AP, 7/8/03)
2003 Jul 8, Nigeria's main
trade unions accepted a government compromise on fuel prices and
ended a crippling eight-day strike.
(AP, 7/8/03)
2003 Jul 8, Palestinian PM
Mahmoud Abbas resigned from a top post in the Fatah movement.
(AP, 7/8/03)
2003 Jul 8, Ladan and Laleh
Bijani (29), Iranian twin sisters, joined at the head, died within
90 minutes of each other as neurosurgeons in Singapore worked into a
3rd day to separate them.
(AP, 7/7/03)(AP, 7/8/03)
2003 Jul 8, A Sudanese airliner
crashed minutes after its captain reported technical problems
following takeoff, killing 116 people. The only survivor was a
2-year-old boy.
(AP, 7/8/03)
2003 Jul 8, In Switzerland a
swerving car plowed through pedestrians on a downtown bridge in
Lausanne. Two people were killed, including a woman pushing her
child in a stroller.
(AP, 7/8/03)
2003 Jul 9, Pres. Bush met with
South African President Thabo Mbeki in Pretoria for discussions on
AIDS, the war on terror, trade issues and to seek common ground in
their attempts to deal with the political and economic crisis in
neighboring Zimbabwe. Pleading for patience, President Bush,
continuing his Africa tour, said the United States would "have to
remain tough" in Iraq despite attacks on U.S. soldiers. Bush said he
was "absolutely confident" in his actions despite the discovery that
one claim he'd made about Saddam Hussein's weapons pursuits was
based on false information.
(AP, 7/9/03)(SFC, 7/10/03, p.A3)(AP, 7/9/04)(AP,
7/9/08)
2003 Jul 9, US Defense Sec.
Rumsfeld increased the estimate of military costs in Iraq to $3.9
billion a month.
(SFC, 7/9/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 9, The US cleared $20
million in direct aid to the Palestinians.
(WSJ, 7/10/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 9, Karl Rove, senior
advisor to Pres. Bush, spoke with syndicated columnist Robert Novak
about diplomat Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame. About this
same time Rove also spoke with Matthew Cooper, Time’s White House
correspondent, and mentioned Wilson and Plame. In 2006 Novak
acknowledged that 3 administration sources, including Rove and CIA
spokesman Bill Harlow, had provided him information.
(SFC, 7/16/05, p.A4)(SFC, 12/12/05, p.A3)(SFC,
7/12/06, p.A3)
2003 Jul 9, Research was
released that said PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), commonly
used in flame retardants, posed a health hazard.
(SFC, 7/9/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 9, Winston Graham
(93), author of the hugely popular Poldark novels, died in Sussex,
England. His other novels included "Marnie" (1961).
(AP, 7/11/03)
2003 Jul 9, Canada became the
1st country in the world to start selling marijuana to several
hundred seriously ill people but said the pot project could be
halted at any time.
(Reuters, 7/9/03)
2003 Jul 9, Haiti paid $32
million in arrears to the Inter-American Development Bank, nearly
wiping out its foreign reserves in its effort to resume frozen
international loans.
(AP, 7/10/03)
2003 Jul 9, It was reported
that occupation authorities had eliminated all import taxes in Iraq
and accelerated the closure of hundreds of local factories unable to
compete with foreign goods. At the same time hundreds of millions of
dollars was pumped in as cash payments to government workers. 2 U.S.
soldiers were killed and a third wounded in separate attacks on
their convoys near Mahmudiyah and Tikrit.
(SFC, 7/9/03, p.A1)(AP, 7/10/03)
2003 Jul 9, In northwestern
Somalia 3 days of fighting among hundreds of gunmen from rival
clan-based factions killed more than 40 people and wounded 90.
(AP, 7/10/03)
2003 Jul 10, Pres. Bush met
with Pres. Festus Mogae in Botswana. Bush said that AIDS is "the
deadliest enemy Africa has ever faced" and pledged to the nation
with the world's highest AIDS infection rate that it would have a
strong partner in his administration in fighting the disease.
(SFC, 7/10/03, p.A8)(AP, 7/10/08)
2003 Jul 10, The oldest planet
ever detected is nearly 13 billion years old and more than twice the
size of Jupiter, locked in orbit around a whirling pulsar and a
white dwarf located near the heart of a globular star cluster some
5,600 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius.
(AP, 7/11/03)
2003 Jul 10, In Burundi recent
fighting left an estimated 170 people killed according to a UN
estimate. 6,000 to 7,000 others had been forced to flee their homes.
(AP, 7/12/03)
2003 Jul 10, Cuba signed an
operating agreement with the Port of Corpus Christi, an agreement
that could help erode the long-standing US embargo of the island.
(AP, 7/11/03)
2003 Jul 10, Lord Shawcross
(101), Britain's chief prosecutor at the Nazi war crimes trials in
Nuremberg, died in Cowbeech, England.
(AP, 7/10/04)
2003 Jul 10, Framers of the
European Union's first constitution finalized their draft charter
but failed to settle differences over how much power national
governments would cede to Brussels.
(AP, 7/10/03)
2003 Jul 10, Unemployment in
Germany was reported to be around 11% with social spending close to
30% of the gross domestic product.
(WSJ, 7/10/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 10, In Hong Kong a
double-decker bus collided with a truck and plunged off a bridge,
killing 21 people and injuring 20 more.
(AP, 7/10/03)
2003 Jul 10, In the southern
Philippines a bomb exploded in a crowded market, killing at least
three people and injuring 26 others, including many children.
(AP, 7/10/03)
2003 Jul 10, Spain's Pres.
Aznar began a visit to 3 US states, California, New Mexico and
Texas, to promote trade and cultural connections.
(SFC, 7/11/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 10, Spain unveiled its
first mosque since 1492 when the Moors were expelled.
(AP, 7/11/03)
2003 Jul 10, In southeastern
Turkey suspected Kurdish rebels raided a village, killing four
villagers and injuring another.
(AP, 7/11/03)
2003 Jul 11, Pres. Bush met
with Pres. Yoweri Museveni in Uganda. Bush and his wife Laura
praised Uganda's aggressive prevention and treatment programs to
combat HIV.
(SFC, 7/11/03, p.A8)(AP, 7/11/03)
2003 Jul 11, CIA Director
George Tenet took blame for Pres. Bush's State of the Union
discredited claim that uranium from Africa had been shipped to Iraq.
(SFC, 7/18/03, p.A14)
2003 Jul 11, Thousands marked
the anniversary of the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica in Bosnia,
burying 282 newly identified victims.
(AP, 7/11/04)
2003 Jul 11, The Canadian
government gave Air Canada the right to operate scheduled passenger
flights to Cuba.
(Reuters, 7/11/03)
2003 Jul 11, In China a
mudslide left 50 people missing in Sichuan province.
(AP, 7/13/03)
2003 Jul 11, India and Pakistan
resumed bus service, a transportation link that was disrupted 18
months earlier due to threats of war.
(AP, 7/11/03)
2003 Jul 11, In Iran Zahra
Kazemi (54), a Montreal-based journalist, died of brain hemorrhage
from inflicted blows. [see Jun 23] Iran later admitted that she was
murdered while under police custody. In 2004 a closed trial was held
for a secret agent charged with the murder. Mohammad Reza Aghdam
Ahmadi pleaded innocent on July 17 and the trial was abruptly ended
the next day. The Tehran court acquitted Ahmadi.
(AP, 7/13/03)(SFC, 7/17/03, p.A7)(WSJ, 7/31/03,
p.A1)(SFC, 7/19/04, p.A8)(AP, 7/25/04)
2003 Jul 11, Spain, a leading
U.S. ally during the war to oust Saddam Hussein, agreed to send
1,300 soldiers to Iraq.
(AP, 7/12/03)
2003 Jul 11, In western Sudan
about 30 rebels and an undisclosed number of government troops were
killed during fighting near the border with Chad.
(AP, 7/13/03)
2003 Jul 11, The World Trade
Organization ruled that heavy duties on steel imports imposed by the
United States violated global trade rules.
(AP, 7/11/04)
2003 Jul 12, Pres. Bush met
with Pres. Olusegun Obasanjo in Nigeria. They discussed the
circumstances under which Liberian President Charles Taylor will
live in exile in Nigeria, Wrapping up a five-day tour of Africa,
President Bush said he would not allow terrorists to use the
continent as a base "to threaten the world."
(SFC, 7/7/03, p.A8)(AP, 7/12/04)
2003 Jul 12, Former White House
press secretary Ari Fleischer leaked the identity of a CIA operative
(Valerie Plame) to Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus during a
phone call. Pincus testified to this in 2007 as the first defense
witness in the CIA leak trial.
(AP, 2/12/07)
2003 Jul 12, The USS Ronald
Reagan, the first carrier named for a living president, was
commissioned in Norfolk, Va.
(AP, 7/12/04)
2003 Jul 12, Benny Carter (95),
jazz musician, composer and bandleader, died in Los Angeles. He was
know as "The King." His work included arrangements for the 1943 film
"Stormy Weather."
(SFC, 7/14/03, p.B4)(WSJ, 7/16/03, p.D8)
2003 Jul 12, In Belgium PM Guy
Verhofstadt took office as head of a new center-left government and
immediately agreed to replace a war crimes law that has soured
Belgium's relations with the United States.
(AP, 7/13/03)
2003 Jul 12, In Germany Techno
fans took part in the 15th Love Parade in Berlin. Hundreds of
thousands fans of techno music were expected to join the event.
(AP, 7/12/03)
2003 Jul 12, In southern
Chechnya rebels ambushed a Russian military vehicle and staged
hit-and-run attacks against federal positions, killing 16 soldiers
and wounding 13.
(AP, 7/13/03)
2003 Jul 12, Western Sahara's
rebels unexpectedly accepted a peace plan for the mineral-rich
region, but Morocco remained opposed.
(AP, 7/12/03)
2003 Jul 13, In Ohio Benjamin
White (17) grabbed Casey Hilmer (13) as she was jogging in suburban
Indian Hills, dragged her to a wooded area and stabbed her in the
face and neck. In 2005 jurors decided that his parents must bear
most of the responsibility, as they awarded $10 million to the
injured victim and her family.
(AP, 8/21/05)
2003 Jul 13, Brenda Paz (17), a
federal witness, was found stabbed to death on the banks of
Virginia’s Shenandoah River. A federal jury convicted two members of
the MS-13 street gang of her murder. MS-13 gang members wanted Paz
dead for cooperating with police and prosecutors in cases against
MS-13 members in Northern Virginia and Texas.
(Econ, 1/7/06, p.23)(http://tinyurl.com/8tlnm)
2003 Jul 13, Compay Segundo
(95), a once-forgotten Cuban musician who gained worldwide fame with
the "Buena Vista Social Club," died in Havana.
(AP, 7/14/03)
2003 Jul 13, In Iraq a
25-member interim Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) of prominent Iraqis
from diverse political and religious backgrounds was named at an
inaugural meeting, the first national body since the fall of Saddam
Hussein. The council abolished a number of old holidays and
established April 9, the fall of Baghdad and Saddam's regime, as a
new national holiday.
(AP, 7/13/03)(WSJ, 4/19/04, p.A14)
2003 Jul 13, In Kashmir a bus
skidded off a mountain road after hitting another vehicle and fell
into a river, killing at least 16 people and injuring 19.
(AP, 7/13/03)
2003 Jul 13, Kuwait's emir,
Sheik Jaber Al Ahmed Al Sabah (76), appointed his brother as prime
minister, separating the post from the crown prince for the first
time in a move seen as a step toward political reform.
(AP, 7/13/03)
2003 Jul 13, Hashim Salamat
(61), founder of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), died in
the Philippines. In the 1960s he was sent to Egypt where he obtained
an Islamic philosophy degree from Al Azhar college in 1967 and a
masters degree two years later.
(WSJ, 8/25/08,
p.A6)(www.newsflash.org/2003/05/ht/ht003629.htm)
2003 Jul 14, President Bush,
facing questions about his credibility, said the United States was
working overtime to prove Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of
mass destruction before the United States invaded Iraq.
(AP, 7/14/04)
2003 Jul 14, Columnist Robert
Novak identified Valerie Plame as a CIA officer. Joseph Wilson,
former American ambassador, had earlier alleged (July 6) that Pres.
Bush had falsely accused Iraq of trying to buy uranium from Niger.
Two White House officials soon called at least 6 Washington
journalists and told them that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a
undercover CIA agent who had worked in Niger. In 2006 Richard
Armitage, former Deputy Sec. of State, said he had confessed to the
FBI on Oct 1, 2003, that he told Robert Novak about Valerie Plame
during a July 8, 2003, meeting.
(Econ, 8/21/04, p.28)(SFC, 10/14/04, p.A4)(SFC,
7/16/05, p.A4)(SFC, 8/29/06, p.A2)
2003 Jul 14, In China
Yang Bin (40), a Chinese-born Dutch citizen, was convicted of fraud
and bribery and sentenced to 18 years in prison. The orchid-selling
tycoon was once ranked by Forbes magazine as China's second-richest
businessman.
(AP, 7/14/03)(SFC, 7/15/03, p.A11)
2003 Jul 14, In China a
mountain on a tributary of the Three Gorges gave way killing 13
farmers. A large tongue of land was sheered into the water and a
resulting wave crashed over 20 boats killing 11 fisherman.
(WSJ, 8/29/07, p.A12)
2003 Jul 14, The Cyprus
parliament voted unanimously to approve the accession of the
Mediterranean island to the European Union.
(AP, 7/14/03)
2003 Jul 14, Iraq's new
governing council, in its first full day on the job, voted to send a
delegation to the U.N. Security Council and assert its right to
represent Baghdad on the world stage.
(AP, 7/14/04)
2003 Jul 14, It was reported
that Kim Jong Il of North Korea maintained an unpublicized trading
network and slush fund named Division 39 with a cash hoard as large
as $5 billion. Its operations included counterfeiting, drug
trafficking and trade in illicit weapons systems.
(WSJ, 7/14/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 14, In Manila Fathur
Rohman al-Ghozi, terror suspect, escaped from prison.
(Econ, 7/19/03, p.34)
2003 Jul 15, The American
League beat the National League in the All-Star Game 7-6.
(AP, 7/15/04)
2003 Jul 15, Scott McClellan
assumed his duties as White House press secretary.
(AP, 7/15/04)
2003 Jul 15, The Bush
administration reported that this year's deficit will reach $445
billion. The Bush administration dramatically raised its budget
deficit projections to $455 billion for the current fiscal year and
$475 billion for the next, record levels fed by the limp economy,
tax cuts and the battle against terrorism.
(SFC, 7/16/03, p.A1)(AP, 7/15/04)
2003 Jul 15, Tex Schramm (83),
who turned the Dallas Cowboys into "America's Team," died in Dallas.
(AP, 7/15/04)
2003 Jul 15, Elisabeth Welch
(99), American-born singer, died in London.
(AP, 7/15/04)
2003 Jul 15, Roberto Bolano
(b.1953), Chilean author, died in Spain. His novel “2666” was
published posthumously in 2006. In 2007 his novel “The Savage
Detectives” (1998) was made available in English.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/enc3/roberto_bola%C3%B1o)(SSFC, 4/1/07,
p.M1)
2003 Jul 15, Four US crew
members were killed in a fiery crash of a Navy helicopter in Italy.
(AP, 7/16/03)
2003 Jul 15, Chad began pumping
oil to Cameroon, part of a project to help alleviate crushing
poverty in the two countries. The 4.2 billion project was funded by
the World Bank on the condition that the oil money be used for
development. Pres. Idris Deby later diverted the money to the
general budget and for weapons.
(AP, 7/16/03)(SFC, 12/21/07, p.A31)
2003 Jul 15, The Colombian
government and right-wing paramilitary fighters agreed to begin
peace talks.
(AP, 7/16/03)
2003 Jul 15, In India health
officials reported that mosquito-borne encephalitis had killed at
least 110 children in Andhra Pradesh over the last 6 weeks.
(WSJ, 7/16/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 15, Montserrat's
governor declared the Caribbean island a disaster zone, days after a
volcanic eruption spewed clouds of rock and ash over the British
territory.
(AP, 7/16/03)
2003 Jul 15, Officials reported
that Syrian troops had begun dismantling bases in Lebanon.
(SFC, 7/16/03, p.A3)
2003 Jul 16, The Environmental
Protection Agency announced it was starting big-money, long-term
cleanups at 10 Superfund toxic waste sites and putting ten other
sites aside for later.
(AP, 7/16/04)
2003 Jul 16, New research
indicated that frequent masturbation, particularly in the 20s, helps
prevent prostate cancer later in life.
(AP, 7/16/03)
2003 Jul 16, In Santa Monica,
Ca., 10 people were killed and over 70 injured when a car driven by
George Russell Weller (87) plowed through a crowded street market in
an apparent accident. In 2006 a jury convicted Weller on 10 counts
of felony manslaughter. He was sentenced to 5 years probation due to
his failing health. Weller was also ordered to pay about $107,100 in
fines and restitution.
(SFC, 7/18/03, p.A1)(SFC, 11/21/06, p.A3)(AP,
7/16/08)
2003 Jul 16, Celia Cruz
(b.1925), Cuban-born Latin music singer, died in Fort Lee, NJ. In
2004 Eduardo Marceles authored “Azucar! The biography of Celia
Cruz.” An autobiography based on recorded material was also
published as “Celia: My Life,” by Celia Cruz and Christina
Reymundo.”
(SFC, 7/17/03, p.A21)(SSFC, 8/15/04, p.M6)
2003 Jul 16, Carol Shields
(68), the Pulitzer-prize winning author who wrote "The Stone
Diaries" (1995) and more than 20 other books, died at her home in
Victoria, British Columbia.
(AP, 7/17/03)(SFC, 7/18/03, p.A29)
2003 Jul 16, Salvatore Mancuso,
head of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, said the largest
paramilitary group agreed to lay down weapons because of the
government's success in retaking control of wide swaths of land from
leftist rebels.
(AP, 7/18/03)
2003 Jul 16, In northern India
more than 100 people were feared dead in flash floods caused by a
heavy rain in a remote hill area of Himachal Pradesh state.
(AP, 7/16/03)
2003 Jul 16, In Sao Tome, an
island nation off West Africa, Pres. Fradique de Menezes was ousted
in a coup led by army Maj. Fernando Pereira. The revolt changed
control of the impoverished country's new oil wealth.
(AP, 7/16/03)
2003 Jul 17, President Bush and
British Prime Minister Tony Blair forcefully defended their decision
to topple Saddam Hussein during a joint White House news conference.
In a speech to the U.S. Congress, Blair said even if they were
proven wrong about Iraq's weapons capabilities, "We will have
destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman
carnage and suffering."
(SFC, 7/18/03, p.A1)(AP, 7/17/04)
2003 Jul 17, Democrats Joe
Lieberman, Dick Gephardt and Dennis Kucinich apologized to the NAACP
for bypassing a presidential forum.
(AP, 7/17/04)
2003 Jul 17, The US combat
death toll in Iraq hit a milestone as the Pentagon acknowledged its
casualties from hostile fire reached 147, the same number of troops
who died at enemy hands in the first Gulf War. Gen. John Abizaid
(b.1951), recently named as head of US Central Command, said
loyalists are fighting an increasingly organized "guerrilla-type
campaign."
(AP, 7/17/03)(WSJ, 9/2/06, p.A4)
2003 Jul 17, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai announced the creation of a 500-member grand council,
or loya jirga, to approve a new constitution for the country this
year.
(AP, 7/17/03)
2003 Jul 17, The leaders of an
Australian Christian church voted to allow homosexuals to become
priests, drawing protest from within the congregation.
(AP, 7/17/03)
2003 Jul 17, In Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, police killed 3 alleged gang members and pulled the
bullet-riddled bodies of 7 others from a sludge-filled river in 2
notorious shantytowns due to an escalating gang war over drug
control between The Red Command and Third Command.
(AP, 7/18/03)
2003 Jul 17, David Kelly (59),
the British Ministry of Defense adviser, was reported missing. He
was a possible source for news that claimed the government had
doctored intelligence on Iraqi weapons to strengthen the case for
war. His body was found the next day. Weapons expert David Kelly
apparently committed suicide by slashing his left wrist. In 2010 the
British government released a formerly secret autopsy report in an
attempt to end speculation that Kelly’s was not a suicide.
(AP, 7/18/03)(AP, 7/19/03)(AP, 10/22/10)
2003 Jul 17, Congo's main rebel
leaders were sworn as vice presidents in a new power-sharing
government, designed to end the country's nearly 5-year civil war. 4
vice presidents represented the ruling party, the opposition party
and 2 rebel groups.
(AP, 7/17/03)(Econ, 8/9/03, p.39)
2003 Jul 17, A US company
launched Mexican sales of microchips that can be implanted under a
person's skin and used to confirm health history and identity.
(AP, 7/17/03)
2003 Jul 17, In Mexico a
landslide triggered by heavy rains in the southern state of Oaxaca
swept away two houses and killed nine people, including five
children.
(AP, 7/18/03)
2003 Jul 17, Philippine
president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said that police corruption likely
led to the escape from prison of three terror suspects, including a
top bomb expert, and threatened to shake up the police force.
(AP, 7/17/03)
2003 Jul 17, In Russia's
Dagestan region a shrapnel-filled bomb exploded near a police
station, killing at least four people and injuring 18 others.
(AP, 7/17/03)
2003 Jul 17, Walter Zapp (97),
inventor of the Minox mini camera featured in spy movies, died, in
northern Switzerland. Zapp was born in 1905 in Riga, Latvia.
(AP, 7/28/03)
2003 Jul 18, The Bush
administration declassified an 8-page part of the October, 2002,
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) dubbed key judgments in the
wake of criticism on intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq.
(WSJ, 2/10/06, p.A4)
2003 Jul 18, Basketball star
Kobe Bryant was charged with sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman
at a Colorado spa; Bryant denied the charge, saying he was guilty
only of adultery. Prosecutors later dropped the case.
(AP, 7/18/08)
2003 Jul 18, Scientists
reported the discovery of a link between a seratonin-controlling
gene and depression.
(SFC, 7/18/03, p.A23)(WSJ, 7/18/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 18, Eight Afghan
soldiers were killed when their vehicle was blown apart by a remote
controlled mine.
(AP, 7/18/03)
2003 Jul 18, The body of
British scientist David Kelly, a weapons expert at the center of a
storm over British intelligence on Iraq, was found a day after he'd
committed suicide.
(AP, 7/18/08)
2003 Jul 18, The Philippine
government announced a cease-fire deal with a Muslim rebel group.
(AP, 7/18/03)
2003 Jul 18, Zimbabwe
government inspectors and police ordered bakeries to pay fines
Friday for violating price controls.
(AP, 7/18/03)
2003 Jul 19, In Spinboldak,
Afghanistan, US forces, backed by helicopter gunships, killed up to
24 suspected Taliban insurgents after their convoy came under
attack.
(AP, 7/21/03)
2003 Jul 19, The first Human
Tongue Transplant took place in Vienna, Austria. Tongue transplants
had been performed for years on animals, but this was the first
attempt at transplanting a human tongue. It was carried out at
Memorial University Hospital in Vienna, Austria during a 14-hour
operation by Dr. Rolf Ewers and eight surgeons. It was performed on
an unidentified 42-year-old patient who was suffering from a
malignant tumor affecting his tongue and jaw. Doctors believed he
would ultimately be able to talk, have feeling and limited movement,
but probably won’t regain the sensation of taste.
(http://tinyurl.com/5ehhps)(http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3964)
2003 Jul 19, In southern China
a bus plunged more than 300 feet off a cliff, killing 23 people.
(AP, 7/21/03)
2003 Jul 19, In Jakarta,
Indonesia, Budiarto Angsono, president of the PT Asaba computer
firm, along with his bodyguard, were murdered. Police said it was
likely the work of hitmen. Hiring a hitman to kill was said to cost
about $2,300.
(AP, 7/26/03)
2003 Jul 19, In Kenya a
twin-engine plane carrying 12 American tourists and two South
African crew members en route to a game reserve crashed into Mount
Kenya, apparently killing everyone on board.
(AP, 7/20/03)
2003 Jul 20, President Bush
welcomed Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi to his Texas ranch for a
two-day visit.
(AP, 7/20/04)
2003 Jul 20, American generals
said a new Iraqi civil defense force would be created over the next
45 days with some 7,000 militia members. Gen. John Abizaid, the top
commander of coalition forces in Iraq, predicted that resistance to
U.S. forces in Iraq would grow in coming months as progress was made
in creating a new government to replace the dictatorial regime of
Saddam Hussein.
(SFC, 7/21/03, p.A1)(AP, 7/20/04)
2003 Jul 20, Two soldiers from
the 101st Airborne Division were killed and another wounded when
their convoy came under rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire
in northern Iraq.
(AP, 7/20/03)
2003 Jul 20, William Woolfolk
(86), writer for cartoon characters like Batman and Captain Marvel,
died. He coined one of Captain Marvel's signature lines: "Holy
Moley," and authored the 1968 bestseller "The Beautiful Couple."
(SFC, 8/11/03, p.A16)
2003 Jul 20, Ben Curtis, an
unknown PGA Tour rookie in his first major championship, won the
British Open.
(AP, 7/20/04)
2003 Jul 20, In France 2
explosions rocked central Nice, slightly injuring at least 16 people
and damaging several government buildings.
(AP, 7/20/03)
2003 Jul 20, The Israeli and
Palestinian prime ministers held a two-hour meeting, kicking off 10
days of international diplomacy aimed at solidifying a fragile
Mideast cease-fire.
(AP, 7/20/03)
2003 Jul 20, In southern Japan
weekend mudslides destroyed more than a dozen homes, killing 16
people.
(AP, 7/22/03)
2003 Jul 20, In Liberia rebels
advanced deeper into the war-ravaged capital, trading mortar,
grenade and machine-gun fire with government troops.
(AP, 7/20/03)
2003 Jul 20, In Puerto Rico
Jose Antonio Rivera Robles, was beaten to death at a gas station
after he reportedly stole a police car. In 2009 a jury in US federal
court convicted four Puerto Rican police officers in the beating
death. Two other officers previously pleaded guilty to felony
federal civil rights charges in the case.
(AP,
8/13/09)(www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/August/09-crt-803.html)
2003 Jul 21, President Bush
said he was working to persuade more nations to help in Iraq.
(AP, 7/21/04)
2003 Jul 21, Carlton Dotson
Jr., the roommate of missing Baylor basketball player Patrick
Dennehy, was arrested and charged with Dennehy's murder.
(AP, 7/21/04)
2003 Jul 21, About 1,000
soldiers of Afghanistan's new national army launched their first
major operation, sweeping for insurgents in the east of the country.
(AP, 7/24/03)
2003 Jul 21, In southwest
Cameroon water-logged hillsides gave way after a week of heavy rain,
killing at least 21 people.
(AP, 7/24/03)
2003 Jul 21, In southwest China
a magnitude-6.2 earthquake toppled thousands of mud-brick houses in
a mountainous area, killing at least 16 people and injuring more
than 300 others.
(AP, 7/22/03)
2003 Jul 21, In Haiti a high
tension wire snapped and fell, electrocuting 15 people who were
gathered to watch the final match of a basketball game in
Petit-Goave. All 15 died.
(AP, 7/22/03)
2003 Jul 21, In Liberia mortar
shells hit the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy in the Monrovia,
injuring at least three people. Fighting in the Liberian capital of
Monrovia left over 600 dead.
(AP, 7/21/03)(AP, 7/22/03)
2003 Jul 21, In Peru 8 mountain
climbers were missing after an avalanche on Alpamayo mountain. Four
Germans, two Israelis, one Venezuelan and one Peruvian were believed
to have been buried.
(AP, 7/23/03)
2003 Jul 21, In Sao Tome
military coup leaders freed seven government ministers detained in
last week's bloodless rebellion and resumed talks with international
mediators on restoring civilian rule.
(AP, 7/21/03)
2003 Jul 21, Monsoon rains were
reported to have killed at least 579 people in South Asia. India
reported a total of 263 deaths, Bangladesh 169, Pakistan 78, and
Nepal 69.
(AP, 7/21/03)
2003 Jul 21, The Saudi
government announced that police arrested 16 al-Qaida-linked terror
suspects over the last 4 days and used tractors to dig up an
underground arsenal: 20 tons of bomb-making chemicals, detonators,
rocket-propelled grenades and rifles.
(AP, 7/22/03)
2003 Jul 22, Months after her
prisoner-of-war ordeal, Pvt. 1st Class Jessica Lynch returned home
to a hero's welcome in Elizabeth, W.Va.
(AP, 7/22/04)
2003 Jul 22, Saddam Hussein's
sons Odai and Qusai were killed in a fiery battle at a Mosul
mansion. Sheik Nawaf al-Zaydan Muhhamad informed US troops of their
presence in his home and became $30 million richer.
(AP, 7/23/03)(AP, 7/24/03)
2003 Jul 22, Italy's state TV
chief said she will resign as soon as Premier Silvio Berlusconi's
governing coalition passes a law opponents say will grant the
business mogul even greater control over Italian media.
(AP, 7/23/03)
2003 Jul 22, In Paris an
electrical fire broke out near the top of the Eiffel Tower, forcing
thousands of alarmed visitors to evacuate.
(AP, 7/23/03)
2003 Jul 22, In Indian-held
Kashmir 3 suspected Islamic guerrillas attacked an army camp,
killing at least 8 soldiers and wounding more than a dozen others
before being slain.
(AP, 7/22/03)
2003 Jul 23, California's 1st
statewide recall for Gov. Davis qualified for ballot, which was soon
scheduled for Oct 7.
(SFC, 7/24/03, p.A1)(SFC, 7/25/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 23, Massachusetts'
attorney general issued a report saying clergy members and others in
the Boston Archdiocese probably sexually abused more than 1,000
people over a period of six decades.
(AP, 7/23/04)
2003 Jul 23, New York City
Councilman James Davis (41) was shot to death by political rival
Othniel Askew (31) at City Hall; a police officer shot and killed
Askew.
(AP, 7/24/08)
2003 Jul 23, A new audiotape,
purported to be of toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, was broadcast by
an Arab satellite station. It called on former soldiers to rise up
against the American occupation.
(AP, 7/23/03)
2003 Jul 23, In "Operation
Helpem Fren" an Australian-led peacekeeping force poured into the
Solomon Islands to keep the island chain from slipping deeper into
anarchy.
(AP, 7/24/03)(Econ, 8/9/03, p.34)
2003 Jul 23, Iran acknowledged
that it was holding senior al Qaeda figures, but would not identify
them.
(WSJ, 7/24/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 23, In Peru 5 masked
gunmen attacked a Canadian mining camp in the Andes, killing a
Peruvian geologist, wounding another and stealing equipment.
(AP, 7/24/03)
2003 Jul 23, In Sao Tome rebel
leaders ended a weeklong bloodless coup after the president signed
an accord promising to replace the government and give them amnesty.
(AP, 7/24/03)
2003 Jul 23, In Uganda 2
passenger boats capsized in strong winds and rough waters on Lake
Albert, and more than 20 people were believed to have drowned.
(AP, 7/24/03)
2003 Jul 24, The House and
Senate intelligence committees issued their final report on the
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, citing countless blunders, oversights and
miscalculations that prevented authorities from stopping the
attackers.
(AP, 7/24/04)
2003 Jul 24, In northern Iraq 3
US soldiers died in the 2nd fatal attack on troops from the
101st Airborne Division since they tracked down and killed Saddam
Hussein's sons Uday and Qusai.
(Reuters, 7/24/03)
2003 Jul 24, Two hand grenades
exploded outside a UN police station in northern Kosovo, killing one
person and injuring four others.
(AP, 7/24/03)
2003 Jul 24, Colin McMillan, an
oilman awaiting confirmation as US Navy secretary, was found dead at
his 55,000-acre ranch in New Mexico. His death was ruled a suicide.
(SFC, 7/26/03, p.A3)
2003 Jul 24, Eleven aid workers
believed abducted by Rwandan and Burundian rebels in a restive
eastern province of war-ravaged Congo were killed.
(AP, 8/7/03)
2003 Jul 24, French lawmakers
overwhelmingly passed a pension reform bill despite weeks of
protests by people angry about having to work longer to get full
retirement benefits.
(AP, 7/24/03)
2003 Jul 24, French lawmakers
overwhelmingly passed a pension reform bill despite weeks of
protests by people angry about having to work longer to get full
retirement benefits. PM Rafarrin managed to push through a pension
reform against union resistance with the support of CFDP, the French
Defense and Protection Company.
(AP, 7/24/03)(Econ, 4/8/06, p.49)
2003 Jul 24, In Guatemala
protesters demanding that former dictator Rios Montt be allowed to
run for president touched off a wave of violence that paralyzed the
capital.
(AP, 7/25/03)
2003 Jul 24, In Monrovia,
Liberia, the bloodiest mortar attack in days killed at least 12 men,
women and children.
(AP, 7/25/03)
2003 Jul 25, Pres. Bush ordered
a naval amphibious force from the Mediterranean to position itself
off the coast of Liberia.
(SFC, 7/26/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 25, Palestinian PM
Mahmoud Abbas met with Pres. George Bush in Washington DC. Abbas
thanked Bush for his efforts in pursuit of a peaceful Middle East
and for a recent grant of $20 million in direct aid to the
Palestinian Authority.
(AP, 7/26/03)
2003 Jul 25, John Schlesinger
(b.1926), film director, died. His films included "Midnight Cowboy"
(1969) and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (1971).
(SFC, 7/26/03, p.A22)
2003 Jul 25, In northeastern
Congo thousands of tribal fighters attacked three villages with
mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles, killing as
many as 150 people.
(AP, 7/29/03)
2003 Jul 25, In Haiti gunmen
ambushed a delegation from the Interior Ministry on a central
highway, killing 4 and seriously wounding one.
(AP, 7/25/03)
2003 Jul 25, An Israeli soldier
fired a tank-mounted machine gun at a pickup truck carrying a
Palestinian family, killing a 4-year-old Palestinian boy and
wounding two other children.
(AP, 7/25/03)
2003 Jul 25, Japanese lawmakers
voted to send military forces to Iraq to help with reconstruction.
(SFC, 7/26/03, p.A3)
2003 Jul 25, In eastern
Pakistan police commandos stormed a jail after five prisoners took
nine visiting judges and 50 female detainees hostage, officials
said. The raid ended the drama, but left three of the justices dead.
(AP, 7/25/03)
2003 Jul 25, In Spain 2 top
members of the outlawed Basque separatist group ETA were sentenced
to 790 years in prison for a 1987 bombing that killed 21 people and
injured 45.
(AP, 7/26/03)
2003 Jul 26, Backers of a drive
to oust California Governor Gray Davis held a boisterous celebration
at the state Capitol in Sacramento, more than two months before the
Oct. 7 recall election.
(AP, 7/26/04)
2003 Jul 26, John Higham (82),
historian, died. His books included "Hanging Together: Unity and
Diversity in American Culture."
(SSFC, 12/28/03, p.E9)
2003 Jul 26, Harold C.
Schonberg (87), New York Times music critic, died in New York.
(AP, 7/26/04)
2003 Jul 26, Cuba celebrated
the 50th anniversary of the start of Fidel Castro's revolution
against Fulgencio Batista.
(AP, 7/26/04)
2003 Jul 26, In Haiti a
4-day Voodoo religion pilgrimage, ended. It began with rituals to
Ogou, the god of war, and ended with rites to the goddess of love,
Erzuli. This year's crowd of more than 10,000 was half the turnout
of last year.
(AP, 7/28/03)
2003 Jul 26, In Iraq a grenade
attack killed 3 US soldiers and wounded four while they guarded a
children's hospital in Baqouba.
(AP, 7/26/03)
2003 Jul 26, Jiri Horak (79),
the first leader of the Czech Social Democratic Party (1990-1992)
after the fall of communism, died in Florida.
(AP, 7/26/03)
2003 Jul 26, Across northern
Japan 3 powerful earthquakes knocked out power grids, collapsed
buildings and set off mudslides. At least 268 people were hurt.
(AP, 7/26/03)
2003 Jul 26, In Liberia a
mortar attack into a church harboring thousands of refugees, killed
at least 15 and wounded about 55 others.
(AP, 7/26/03)
2003 Jul 27, Bob Hope (b.1903),
master of the one-liner and favorite comedian of servicemen and
presidents alike, died at his home in Toluca Lake, Ca. He was born
Leslie Townes Hope on May 29, 1903, in Eltham, England, the 5th of 7
sons of a British stonemason and a Welsh singer of light opera.
(AP, 7/28/03)
2003 Jul 27, In Bermuda Premier
Jennifer Smith stepped down after retaining her seat by just eight
votes and watching her governing party narrowly win elections in the
British territory. Members of the center-left Progressive
Labor Party endorsed Alex Scott (63) to replace her.
(AP, 7/28/03)
2003 Jul 27, Lance Armstrong
rode to his 5th straight Tour de France victory in a ceremonial
final stage in Paris.
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 27, Cambodia held
elections for seats in the123-member national Assembly in the third
democratic election in a decade.
(AP, 7/27/03)(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.A9)
2003 Jul 27, The Israeli
Cabinet voted to release up to 540 jailed Palestinians.
(SFC, 7/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 27, In Manila some 300
mutinous Philippine troops, who seized a downtown residential
shopping complex, surrendered. This ended a 19-hour standoff with
government forces without a shot fired. Pres. Arroyo declared a
state of rebellion, which lasted to Aug 11. In 2008 Arroyo pardoned
9 military officers who apologized after being convicted of the
coup. In 2010 Antonio Trillanes IV, the most prominent of the 300
troops, was released from seven years in detention in a presidential
amnesty for military rebels.
(AP, 7/27/03)(WSJ, 8/12/03, p.A1)(AP,
5/12/08)(AP, 12/21/10)
2003 Jul 28, J.P. Morgan Chase
& Co. agreed to pay $305 million to settle actions related to
loans and trades made with Enron Corp. and Dynegy Inc.
(WSJ, 7/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 28, Aaron Bell, jazz
bassist with Duke Ellington, died in NYC.
(EntW, 12/03, p.94)
2003 Jul 28, Bangladesh became
the second nation to ban the current issue of Newsweek's
international edition over an article on new interpretations of
Islam's holy book.
(AP, 7/28/03)
2003 Jul 28, In Cambodia PM Hun
Sen's party claimed victory in general elections, saying it expects
to win around 73 of the 123 seats in the National Assembly. Hun
Sen's party swept to victory, but apparently fell short of the
two-thirds majority needed to govern outright.
(AP, 7/28/03)(AP, 7/29/03)
2003 Jul 28, In northern China
a blast ripped through a fireworks factory in Wangkou, killing 29
people and injuring at least 141.
(AP, 7/29/03)
2003 Jul 28, In Liberia rebels
captured the second-largest city of Buchanan, depriving embattled
President Charles Taylor of his last significant port outside the
besieged capital.
(AP, 7/28/03)
2003 Jul 28, A mass grave was
discovered in the mountainous Russian republic of
Kabardino-Balkaria, a poor mountainous region close to Chechnya,
with the remains of men, women and children who died 10 to 20 years
ago.
(AP, 7/29/03)
2003 Jul 28, In Saudi Arabia 6
suspected militants were killed in a firefight with Saudi police,
who raided a farm where they were hiding out. Two police also were
killed.
(AP, 7/28/03)
2003 Jul 29, Boston's Bill
Mueller became the first player in major league history to hit grand
slams from both sides of the plate in a game and connected for three
homers in a 14-7 win at Texas.
(AP, 7/29/04)
2003 Jul 29, President Bush
refused to release a congressional report on possible links between
Saudi Arabian officials and the Sept. 11 hijackers, saying
disclosure "would help the enemy" by revealing intelligence sources
and methods.
(AP, 7/29/04)
2003 Jul 29, American soldiers
in Tikrit overpowered and arrested a bodyguard who rarely left
Saddam Hussein's side.
(AP, 7/29/03)
2003 Jul 29, A heat wave and a
drought gauged a multibillion-dollar hole into Europe's economy,
crippling shipping, shriveling crops and driving up the cost of
electricity.
(AP, 7/29/03)
2003 Jul 29, Forest fires swept
through parts of the ritzy French Riviera for a second day,
devastating scenic woods and forcing thousands to be evacuated. At
least four people have been killed.
(AP, 7/29/03)
2003 Jul 29, In Ivory Coast
thousands of college students rioted in Abidjan, demanding
compensation for a lost school year canceled by Ivory Coast's civil
war.
(AP, 7/29/03)
2003 Jul 29, In Liberia Pres.
Charles Taylor's forces launched what they called a major
counterattack on the key port of Buchanan, battling to take back
Liberia's second-largest city a day after it fell to insurgents.
(AP, 7/29/03)
2003 Jul 29, A land mine
explosion shattered a military convoy near the border with rebel
Chechnya, killing five Russian soldiers.
(AP, 7/30/03)
2003 Jul 29, Foday Sankoh (65),
an indicted Sierra Leone war criminal whose rebel forces were
notorious for hacking off the limbs, lips and ears of civilians,
died in UN custody at a Freetown hospital.
(AP, 7/30/03)
2003 Jul 30, President Bush
took personal responsibility for the first time for using disputed
intelligence in his State of the Union address, but predicted he
would be vindicated for going to war against Iraq.
(AP, 7/30/04)
2003 Jul 30, Textile
manufacturer Pillowtex filed for bankruptcy saying it will close 16
plants and sell its assets. 4,300 people in the Kannopolis, NC, area
lost their jobs.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R10)(Econ, 4/23/05, p.30)
2003 Jul 30, Sam Phillips
(b.1923), founder of Sun Records (1952), died in Memphis. Phillips
produced Elvis Presley's 1st record.
(SFC, 8/1/03, p.A19)
2003 Jul 30, In Cambodia
opposition parties said they would only form a coalition government
if PM Hun Sen stepped down.
(SFC, 8/1/03, p.A3)
2003 Jul 30, In Paris, France,
2 men from Belarus were arrested for running Regpay, an
Internet-based child porn trade. A 3rd partner was arrested 2 days
later in Spain. Agents later arrested 330 Regpay subscribers in the
US.
(WSJ, 1/17/06, p.A6)
2003 Jul 30, Guatemala's
highest court cleared the way for former dictator Efrain Rios Montt
to run for president.
(AP, 7/30/03)
2003 Jul 30, In India Lal
Bihari, president of the Association of the Living Dead, estimated
35,000 people in Uttar Pradesh state have been wrongly certified as
dead. "We have knocked on doors of government officials and police.
No one is ready to recognize us as living persons because revenue
records declare us dead."
(AP, 8/1/03)
2003 Jul 30, Iraq's U.S.-picked
interim government named its first president: Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a
Shiite Muslim from the Daawa party banned by Saddam Hussein.
(AP, 7/30/04)(WSJ, 4/28/05, p.A1)
2003 Jul 30, The last
Volkswagen Beetle was produced in Mexico. Some 21,529,464 Bugs were
built there over 68 years.
(WSJ, 7/31/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 31, Two of ousted
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's daughters and their nine children were
granted refuge in Jordan.
(AP, 7/31/04)
2003 Jul 31, The Israeli
parliament voted to block Palestinians who marry Israelis from
becoming Israeli citizens of residents. The legislation was enacted
for one year. In 2006 the Supreme Court rejected petitions to
overturn the law.
(SFC, 8/1/03, p.A20)(Econ, 5/20/06, p.47)
2003 Jul 31, In Nepal monsoon
rains triggered landslides, killing at least 48 villagers over the
last 2 days, burying houses and blocking a key highway.
(AP, 7/31/03)
2003 Jul 31, The Vatican
launched a global campaign against gay marriages, warning Catholic
politicians that support of same-sex unions was "gravely immoral"
and urging non-Catholics to join the offensive.
(SFC, 8/1/03, p.A1)(AP, 7/31/04)
2003 Jul, Yahoo paid $1.6
billion for Overture Services, a pioneer in the paid-search
advertising business. Overture was called GoTo.com and came out of a
factory of companies called Idealab, developed by Bill Gross in
1996.
(Econ, 5/15/04, e-com p.17)(Econ, 7/8/06,
p.62)
2003 Jul, China's foreign
reserves reached a record $356 billion.
(Econ, 8/30/03, p.54)
2003 Aug 1, Australia’s island
state of Tasmania reported that a deadly facial cancer was killing
Tasmanian devils, a carnivorous marsupial the size of a small dog.
(www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s915506.htm)
2003 Aug 1, The Belgian Senate
gave final approval to a scaled-down war crimes law that the
government hopes will repair relations with Washington and preserve
Belgium's role as NATO headquarters.
(AP, 8/1/03)
2003 Aug 1, In Bolivia
police seized 2 tons of cocaine and arrested 20 people in what
officials called the country's biggest drug bust in nearly a decade.
(AP, 8/1/03)
2003 Aug 1, Marie Trintignant
(41) died after several days on a respirator in France. She was
initially hospitalized in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, on July
27 after French rock star Bertrand Cantat (39) allegedly beat her at
the hotel where they were staying with her mother and one of her
sons. Trintignant, had been in Lithuania since June filming a joint
French-Lithuanian television movie, "Colette," about the French
female writer. Bertrand Cantat was later sentenced to 8 years in
prison for manslaughter. He was released for good behavior in
October 2007 after serving four years.
(AP,
8/5/03)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Trintignant)
2003 Aug 1, In Israel Yehiya
Farhan and a 16-year-old girlfriend lured Dana Bennett (18) into
their vehicle. Farhan beat her to death and concealed the body in
the northern hills. Months earlier the couple had picked up Czech
hitch hiker Sylvia Molrova (27), killed her and dumped her body in a
remote spot. In 2009 Israeli detectives arrested Farhan. He was
already in custody on suspicion of raping an Australian tourist when
a tip led homicide detectives to him. In 2010 Farhan (34) was
sentenced to 102 years in prison. Farhan's female accomplice helped
police with their investigation and was sentenced to a shorter
prison term in a plea bargain.
(www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3721705,00.html)(AP, 7/21/10)
2003 Aug 1, In Kenya a
terrorist suspect detonated a hand grenade as he was being arrested
near Mombasa's central police station, killing himself and a
policeman.
(AP, 8/1/03)
2003 Aug 1, In Monrovia,
Liberia, shelling erupted after a one-day lull, killing at least 9
people. Top West African officials flew into the capital to press
the country's president to cede power after peacekeepers arrive, but
Charles Taylor kept them waiting by reportedly heading to a southern
war zone. Taylor actually flew to Libya to gather arms and
ammunition.
(AP, 8/1/03)(SFC, 8/8/03, p.A10)
2003 Aug 1, Mexican soldiers
used a bazooka to return fire against cars believed to be carrying
drug traffickers during a wild pre-dawn battle, killing three
suspects.
(AP, 8/1/03)
2003 Aug 1, North Korea eased
its insistence on one-on-one talks with Washington and agreed to
join U.S.-proposed multilateral talks, where it will find little
sympathy for its suspected nuclear weapons programs.
(AP, 8/1/03)
2003 Aug 1, A suicide
bomber rammed a truck packed with explosives through the gates of a
Russian military hospital near Chechnya, destroying the building and
killing at least 50 people.
(AP, 8/3/03)
2003 Aug 1, In Rwanda the
largest trial so far seeking justice for the 1994 genocide ended. A
tribunal convicted 100 people of rape, torture, murder and crimes
against humanity.
(AP, 8/4/03)
2003 Aug 1, In Sao Tome PM
Maria das Neves resigned. Four other government ministers also have
offered to resign.
(AP, 8/1/03)
2003 Aug 1, The UN Security
Council approved sending a multinational force to Liberia.
(AP, 8/2/03)
2003 Aug 2, Gov. Davis signed a
nearly $100 million budget for California and blamed Republicans for
the budget's painful cuts.
(SSFC, 8/3/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 2, Bolivian police
seized 3 more tons of cocaine meant for shipment to Spain in the
country's biggest drug bust ever.
(AP, 8/3/03)
2003 Aug 2, Indonesia judges
sentenced US reporter William Nessen to 41 days for failing to
inform officials of an address change in Jakarta. Nessen had already
been jailed for 40 days following time spent with rebels in Aceh.
(SFCM, 11/2/03, p.15)
2003 Aug 2, A bomb exploded in
a car south of Beirut, killing at least two people in the vehicle
and wounding passers-by.
(AP, 8/2/03)
2003 Aug 2, Canadian military
personnel joined nearly 2,000 civilian firefighters battling the
three fires -- in Kamloops, Barriere and Falkland, British Columbia.
An estimated 8,500 people had already been evacuated as 16,500 acres
burned.
(Reuters, 8/2/03)
2003 Aug 2, Saddam Hussein's
two elder sons and a grandson were buried as martyrs near the
deposed Iraqi leader's hometown of Tikrit, where insurgents
afterward attacked U.S. troops with three remote-controlled bombs.
(AP, 8/2/04)
2003 Aug 2, In Liberia Pres.
Charles Taylor agreed to cede power on Aug. 11.
(AP, 8/2/03)
2003 Aug 3, The Episcopal
Church's House of Deputies further paved the way for the Rev. V.
Gene Robinson to become the church's first openly gay elected
bishop, approving him on a 2-1 vote.
(AP, 8/5/04)
2003 Aug 3, As of this day 249
U.S. soldiers have died since the beginning of military operations
in Iraq.
(AP, 8/4/03)
2003 Aug 3, Fires in Flathead
Ct., Montana, covered over 23,000 acres and into the edge of Glacier
National Park. Tow other fires burned nearby.
(SSFC, 8/3/03, p.A13)
2003 Aug 3, Dr. Pater Safar
(79), regarded as the father of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (cpr),
died in Pittsburgh, Pa.
(SFC, 8/5/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 3, In western India 3
buildings collapsed when a cooking gas cylinder exploded, killing at
least 43 people and injuring 39.
(AP, 8/4/03)
2003 Aug 3, In northern
Pakistan dynamite used for building a water channel blew up in a
village, killing at least 45 people and injuring 150 others.
(AP, 8/3/03)
2003 Aug 3, The worst wildfires
in 20 years raged across central Portugal, killing at least nine
people. Portugal’s fires this year killed 18 people and destroyed
1.05 million acres of forest.
(AP, 8/4/03)(Econ, 8/27/05, p.42)
2003 Aug 3, It was reported
that the economic crises in Zimbabwe has led to corpses being
stacked up because relatives could not afford burial costs.
(SSFC, 8/3/03, p.A16)
2003 Aug 4, California Governor
Gray Davis asked the state Supreme Court to delay his Oct. 7 recall
election until the following March. The recall went ahead as
originally scheduled.
(AP, 8/5/04)
2003 Aug 4, In northern
Afghanistan a soldier of warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum mishandled a
mortar and the shell exploded, killing 13 troops and injuring nine
others.
(AP, 8/5/03)
2003 Aug 4, Azerbaijan's
parliament named ailing President Geidar Aliev's son, Ilham Geidar
Oglu Aliev (b.1961), as PM.
(AP, 8/4/03)
2003 Aug 4, Brazilian novelist
Ruben Fonseca (b.1925) won Mexico's prestigious Juan Rulfo Prize for
literature.
(AP, 8/4/03)
2003 Aug 4, In China’s Qiqihar
city one person died and 43 people were injured after construction
workers broke open several barrels of World War II mustard gas
abandoned by Japanese troops. In 2010 a Tokyo court rejected
compensation claims by a group of Chinese plaintiffs, who demanded
the Japanese government pay 1.43 billion yen ($16 million) in
damages.
(www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-08/12/content_254104.htm)(AP,
5/24/10)
2003 Aug 4, In Honduras 9
members of a family were shot to death by suspected gang that raided
their home in San Pedro Sula.
(AP, 8/4/03)
2003 Aug 4, West African forces
arrived in Liberia to oversee the departure of President Charles
Taylor.
(AP, 8/4/08)
2003 Aug 4, Chung Mong-hun (54)
a top executive of the Hyundai conglomerate, whose business
spearheaded reconciliation efforts with North Korea but ended up
tangled in debt and scandal, plunged to his death from his office
window.
(AP, 8/4/03)
2003 Aug 4, Mexico's federal
government dispatched some 650 federal agents to Tijuana in the
latest attempt to curb smuggling and corruption in the rough border
city.
(AP, 8/4/03)
2003 cAug 4, Pres. Putin
visited Malaysia to seal a $900 million sale of Sukhoi fighter jets
and tout Russia's liberal sale policies.
(WSJ, 8/5/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 5, US Episcopal
leaders approved New Hampshire bishop-elect Rev. Gene Robinson as
the church's first openly gay bishop.
(SFC, 8/6/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 5, A powerful car bomb
exploded in an apparent suicide attack outside the Marriott hotel in
downtown Jakarta, killing 10 people and wounding 149, including two
Americans. The head of Asmar Latin Sani (28), the suicide bomber,
landed on the 5th floor of the hotel.
(AP, 8/5/03)(SFC, 8/7/03, p.A3)(SFC, 8/9/03,
p.A3)
2003 Aug 5, Catalino "Tite"
Curet Alonso (77), a Puerto Rican composer who wrote nearly 2,000
dance songs and ballads, died in Baltimore.
(AP, 8/6/03)(SFC, 8/9/03, p.A15)
2003 Aug 6, Arnold
Schwarzenegger on The Tonight Show told Jay Leno and a national TV
audience of his candidacy to replace Gray Davis as governor of
California. Hours later, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante said he was
entering the recall race as well.
(SFC, 8/7/03, p.A1)(AP, 8/6/04)
2003 Aug 6, Roberto Marinho
(98), who turned his father's O Globo newspaper into a media empire
and became one of Brazil's richest men, died.
(AP, 8/7/03)(SFC, 8/9/03, p.A14)
2003 Aug 6, Israel freed 334
Palestinian prisoners in a bid to jump-start peace efforts, but the
gesture fell flat among Palestinians.
(AP, 8/6/04)
2003 Aug 6, Record-breaking
heat, already blamed for three dozen deaths, continued to torment
Europe.
(AP, 8/6/04)
2003 Aug 7, Scientists reported
a new vaccine that was successful against the Ebola virus in
monkeys.
(WSJ, 8/7/03, p.D6)
2003 Aug 7, In the August issue
of Foundations of Physics Letters, Peter Lynds of New Zealand
claimed to see time and motion in a new way. Lynds refutes an
assumption dating back 2,500 years, that time can be thought of in
physical, definable quantities. In essence, scientists have long
assumed that motion can be considered in frozen moments, or
instants, even as time flows on. "There isn't a precise instant
underlying an object's motion," he said. "And as its position is
constantly changing over time -- and as such, never determined -- it
also doesn't have a determined position at any time."
(AP, 8/7/03)
2003 Aug 7, In Afghanistan some
40 suspected Taliban fighters killed 6 Afghan soldiers and a driver
for a US aid organization.
(SFC, 8/8/03, p.A7)
2003 Aug 7, An Australian
patrol boat spotted the Viarsa, a Spain-based fishing vessel, near
Heard Island, half way between Australia and South Africa. The
Viarsa with 96 tons of Chilean Sea Bass fled south and was chased
for 3 weeks until cornered with help by ships from Britain and South
Africa. In 2006 G. Bruce Knecht authored “Hooked: Pirates, Poaching
and the Perfect Fish,” an account of the chase and the Chilean Sea
Bass.
(WSJ, 5/4/06, p.B1)
2003 Aug 7, Bangladesh and
Namibia pledged more than 6,000 troops for a UN peace-keeping force
to replace multinational soldiers now deploying in war-torn Liberia.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 7, Chechen rebels
using a shoulder-fired missile shot down a Russian military
helicopter in the mountains, killing three of the crew.
(AP, 8/7/03)
2003 Aug 7, Gunmen ambushed a
Russian military convoy near the border with Chechnya, killing six
soldiers and wounding seven.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 7, Denmark's
unemployment rate rose in June to 6.2 percent, the highest level in
almost five years.
(AP, 8/7/03)
2003 Aug 7, An Indonesian court
sentenced Amrozi bin Nurhasyim to death in the 2002 Bali bombings
that killed 202 people.
(AP, 8/7/04)
2003 Aug 7, In Iraq a car bomb
shattered a street outside the walled Jordanian Embassy, killed 19
people — including two children.
(SFC, 8/9/03, p.A1)(AP, 8/7/08)
2003 Aug 7, In Liberia Charles
Taylor picked Vice Pres. Moses Blah (56) as his successor. West
African peacekeepers entered Liberia's rebel-besieged capital.
(AP, 8/7/04)
2003 Aug 7, An opposition party
in the Turks and Caicos, a British territory, won legislative
elections and will return to power after eight years out of office.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, George Soros
pledged $10 million to a political action committee called America
Coming Together to defeat George Bush in 2004.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, A US federal judge
ruled that some 264,000 square miles of submerged lands in the
Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth, belong to the United
States.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, The Boston Roman
Catholic archdiocese offered $55 million to settle lawsuits stemming
from sex abuse by priests. The archdiocese later settled for $85
million.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2003 Aug 8, In eastern Colombia
suspected rebels set off a car bomb near the Saravena airport,
killing five civilians, including two children.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, In India workers
camped out at a mountain tunnel were hit by a fierce overnight
thunderstorm near a Himalayan resort in Himachal Pradesh state,
leaving at least 26 dead.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, Mahmud Dhiyab
Al-Ahmad, Saddam Hussein's former interior minister, (No. 29 on the
list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis) surrendered to coalition forces.
(AP, 8/10/03)
2003 Aug 8, A West Bank raid on
a bomb lab by Israeli troops killed 2 members of the Islamic
militant group Hamas. An Israeli soldier also was killed.
(AP, 8/9/03)
2003 Aug 8, Hezbollah
guerrillas shelled Israeli positions in a disputed Lebanese border
region for the first time in eight months, drawing Israeli
airstrikes and artillery fire.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 9, The US Army fired
up its first chemical weapons incinerator located near a residential
area, outside Anniston, Ala., to destroy two rockets loaded with
enough sarin nerve agent to wipe out a city.
(SSFC, 8/10/03, p.A4)(AP, 8/9/08)
2003 Aug 9, Gregory Hines (57),
considered the greatest tap dancer of his generation, died of cancer
in Los Angeles.
(AP, 8/11/03)
2003 Aug 9, In northeastern
Brazil 84 inmates from a maximum security prison escaped through a
tunnel.
(AP, 8/9/03)
2003 Aug 9, Mitar Rasevic,
Bosnian Serb prison chief of 37 guards at the KP-Dom detention
facility in Foca, surrendered in Belgrade to the Yugoslav war crimes
tribunal. He was wanted on charges of enslavement, torture and
murder at the wartime prison.
(AP, 8/15/03)
2003 Aug 10, Atlanta Braves
shortstop Rafael Furcal turned the 12th unassisted triple play in
major league history against the St. Louis Cardinals. St. Louis beat
Atlanta 3-2.
(AP, 8/11/04)
2003 Aug 10, Britain sweltered
through its hottest day on record and Alpine glaciers melted as the
heat wave that has baked much of Europe for days sizzled
relentlessly on. Britain topped 100 degrees for the first time in
recorded history.
(AP, 8/11/03)(AP, 8/10/08)
2003 Aug 10, Eight Russian
soldiers and police died in rebel attacks in a day of violence
throughout Chechnya.
(AP, 8/11/03)
2003 Aug 10, India's prime
minister called for an end to bloodshed between Pakistan and India
in a statement read before a peace conference in Islamabad.
(AP, 8/10/03)
2003 Aug 10, Israeli warplanes
bombed suspected Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, hours
after the militant group shelled northern Israel, killing a teenage
boy.
(AP, 8/10/03)
2003 Aug 10, Pirates in the
Strait of Malacca struck a small tanker near the Port Klang, Kuala
Lumpur. They looted the ship and took it into Indonesia waters and
sought $100,000 ransom for the top 3 officers.
(SFC, 8/15/03, p.A8)
2003 Aug 10, Liberian President
Charles Taylor delivered a farewell address to a nation bloodied by
14 years of war.
(AP, 8/11/04)
2003 Aug 10, In Pakistan gunmen
on motorcycles opened fire on a van in the southern port city of
Karachi, killing five people.
(AP, 8/10/03)
2003 Aug 10, In the southern
Philippines army troops searching for a suspected Islamic militant
clashed with unidentified men, killing three gunmen.
(AP, 8/10/03)
2003 Aug 10, Russian cosmonaut
Yuri Malenchenko, aboard the international space center, married his
earthbound bride, Ekaterina Dmitriev, who was at Johnson Space
Center in Houston, in the first wedding ever conducted from space.
(AP, 8/11/08)
2003 Aug 10, Saudi police
arrested 10 suspected Muslim militants following a gunfight after
police tried to stop their cars outside Riyadh.
(WSJ, 8/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 11, Pres. Bush named
Mike Leavitt, Republican governor of Utah, to head the EPA.
(SFC, 8/11/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 11, Herb Brooks, who
coached the U.S. Olympic hockey team to the "Miracle on Ice" victory
over the Soviet Union in 1980, died in a car wreck near Minneapolis
at age 66.
(AP, 8/11/04)
2003 Aug 11, In Afghanistan
NATO took command of the 5,000-strong international peacekeeping
force in Kabul, its 1st deployment outside Europe.
(AP, 8/11/03)
2003 Aug 11, British troops
restored badly needed electricity to parts of Basra and supervised
distribution of gasoline after two days of protests over fuel and
power shortages.
(AP, 8/11/03)
2003 Aug 11, In northern China
a gas explosion ripped through a coal mine, killing at least 33
miners and leaving nine missing.
(AP, 8/12/03)
2003 Aug 11, The Dominican
Republic granted asylum to former Ecuadorian President Gustavo
Noboa, who has been under investigation for allegedly mishandling
his country's foreign debt negotiations and costing the country $9
billion.
(AP, 8/12/03)
2003 Aug 11, A helicopter
chartered by one of India's largest oil companies crashed into the
Arabian Sea near Bombay with 29 people on board. Two people were
rescued.
(AP, 8/12/03)
2003 Aug 11, In Liberia Pres.
Charles Taylor shook hands with his designated successor as his
long-promised resignation ceremony started in Monrovia. A UN
official later reported that Taylor took $3 million with him, that
had been donated for disarming and demobilizing thousands of armed
combatants. Taylor flew into exile in Nigeria following his
resignation.
(AP, 8/11/03)(SFC, 9/6/03, p.A3)(AP, 7/14/09)
2003 Aug 11, Gunmen killed
Nadirshakh Khachilayev, a former lawmaker, in Makhachkala, capital
of Dagestan. In 1998 his armed supporters were accused of seizing a
Dagestani government building during a violent anti-government raid
and Russia's parliament voted to lift his immunity.
(AP, 8/12/03)
2003 Aug 11, Saudi Crown Prince
Abdullah flew to Morocco for talks with King Mohammed VI about Iraq
and the Palestinian territories.
(AP, 8/11/03)
2003 Aug 11, Hambali (39), an
Indonesian whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, was captured in a
raid in the ancient temple city of Ayutthaya, Thailand. Hambali, the
operational head of Jemaah Islamiyah, was handed over to US
authorities and flown out of the country. He was al Qaeda's top man
in Southeast Asia and the suspected mastermind behind a string of
deadly bombings including the Bali attacks.
(Reuters, 8/15/03)(SFC, 8/15/03, p.A3)(AP,
8/16/03)
2003 Aug 12, The FBI arrested
Hemant Lakhani, an Indian-born British arms dealer, in a sting
operation in New Jersey and foiled a contrived plot aimed at
smuggling a shoulder-fired missile for some $80,000 to US-based
terrorists. It involved cooperation between the intelligence
services of the US and Russia.
(AP, 8/13/03)(WSJ, 8/13/03, p.A1)(SFC, 8/14/03,
p.A3)
2003 Aug 12, John Poindexter
submitted a 5-page letter of resignation from his position as
director of DARPA, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency. Poindexter, a former Navy admiral and national security
advisor to Pres. Reagan, had proposed the Pentagon-funded Total
Awareness Program, a plan for government computers to gather digital
and personal information on everybody in the pursuit of terrorists.
His plan, which included built-in privacy protections, failed but
was succeeded by a National Security Agency program that left out
his privacy protections.
(SFC, 8/13/03, p.A5)(SSFC, 3/7/10, p.F5)
2003 Aug 12, Some 8,000 US
doctors called for a government-financed national health insurance
as a single-payer system similar to an expanded version of Medicare.
(SFC, 8/13/03, p.A3)
2003 Aug 12, An Internet worm
targeting Microsoft Corp Windows users was spreading rapidly around
the world, triggering computer crashes and slowing Web connections.
Dubbed Blaster but also known as LoveSan or MSBlaster, carried a
message for the Microsoft chairman: "Billy Gates why do you make
this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!!"
(AP, 8/12/03)
2003 Aug 12, A balsa-mylar
model airplane set a long distance flight record of 1,888.3 miles as
it landed in Ireland from Newfoundland.
(WSJ, 8/13/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 12, At least 20
combatants died in a gunbattle between suspected Taliban fighters
and Afghan government soldiers.
(AP, 8/13/03)
2003 Aug 12, Legislators in
Argentina's lower house voted to throw out amnesty laws that
effectively ended trials over abuses during the country's military
dictatorship.
(AP, 8/13/03)
2003 Aug 12, El Salvador sent
360 peacekeepers to Iraq.
(AP, 8/13/03)
2003 Aug 12, Two teenage
Palestinian suicide bombings less than an hour apart killed at least
2 Israelis at a shopping plaza in Israel and a bus stop in the West
Bank.
(AP, 8/12/03)
2003 Aug 12, Liberia's leading
rebel movement agreed to lift its siege of the capital and vital
port within two days, allowing food to flow to hundreds of thousands
of hungry people.
(AP, 8/12/04)
2003 Aug 12, The Serbian
government said it wants to retake control of Kosovo but pledged to
give it "substantial autonomy." Serbia claimed UN officials have
failed to establish democracy there.
(AP, 8/13/03)
2003 Aug 13, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, candidate for governor of California, named Warren
Buffet as his economic adviser. 135 candidates were certified.
(WSJ, 8/14/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 13, Florida's
legislature approved a bill that capped most medical malpractice
damage awards at $500,000.
(WSJ, 8/14/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 13, In southern
Afghanistan a bomb ripped through a bus in Lashkargah, killing 15
people, including six children. Officials blamed al-Qaida and
remnants of the Taliban militia for the bombing, the deadliest in
nearly a year. Heavy fighting erupted between government soldiers
and Taliban remnants. 43 deaths were reported in the fighting.
(AP, 8/13/03)(AP, 8/14/03)
2003 Aug 13, Ontario health
officials reported that a family doctor had become the 44th person
to die from SARS in Toronto.
(AP, 8/14/03)
2003 Aug 13, Chinese
researchers reported that they had created hybrid embryos of human
and rabbit DNA as a source for stem cells.
(SFC, 8/14/03, p.A3)
2003 Aug 13, Iraq began pumping
crude oil from its northern oil fields for the first time since the
start of the war.
(AP, 8/13/04)
2003 Aug 13, In Iraq British
Private Jason Smith (32) died of heat stroke as the local
temperature passed the limits of available thermometers. An inquest
in 2007 ruled that troops were not adequately advised on how to cope
with high temperatures. In 2009 the British Ministry of Defense
upheld an earlier judgment that the had breached Smith’s right to
life.
(Econ, 5/23/09,
p.58)(www.operations.mod.uk/telic/smith.htm)
2003 Aug 13, Libya agreed to
set up a $2.7 billion fund for families of 270 people killed in the
1988 Pan Am bombing.
(AP, 8/13/04)
2003 Aug 13, Scientists are
blaming global warming for falling fish harvests in Africa's Lake
Tanganyika, threatening the diets of several poor nations.
(AP, 8/13/03)
2003 Aug 14, A massive power
blackout hit 8 northeastern US states and southern Canada. It shut
down 10 major airports and 9 nuclear power stations. The problem
began in the FirstEnergy plant near Cleveland at 2pm. Cleveland lost
power at 4:09pm.
(AP, 8/15/03)(SFC, 8/15/03, p.A1)(SFC, 8/16/03,
p.A1)(WSJ, 8/18/03, p.A6)
2003 Aug 14, Roy Moore,
Alabama's chief justice, said that he would refuse to move a Ten
Commandments monument from the state judicial building in
Montgomery.
(SFC, 8/15/03, p.A4)
2003 Aug 14, Dozens of American
troops landed at Liberia's main airport, increasing the U.S.
presence to boost West African peacekeepers, as rebels began
withdrawing from Monrovia. A "quick reaction" force of 150 combat
troops were sent to back up Nigerian peacekeepers.
(AP, 8/14/03)
2003 Aug 14, The French health
ministry estimated that about 3,000 people had died in France of
heat-related causes since abnormally high temperatures swept across
the country about two weeks ago.
(AP, 8/14/03)
2003 Aug 14, In northeast India
suspected separatist rebels blew up a bus on the main highway,
killing six passengers.
(AP, 8/14/03)
2003 Aug 14, Israeli troops
killed Mohammed Sidr, a top Islamic Jihad commander, in a gun battle
at his hideout in Hebron.
(AP, 8/14/03)(WSJ, 8/15/03, p.A6)
2003 Aug 14, A Greek oil tanker
that ran aground Jul 27 off the port city of Karachi broke apart,
but officials said the worst was over and rich fishing grounds
nearby were not threatened. The ship carried 378,000 to 450,000
gallons. It leaked an estimated 12,000 metric tons.
(AP, 8/14/03)(SFC, 8/15/03, p.A3)
2003 Aug 14, The UN Security
Council approved a resolution welcoming the Iraqi Governing Council
and created a mission to oversee UN efforts to help rebuild the
country and establish a democratic government.
(AP, 8/14/03)
2003 Aug 14, Rebels lifted
their siege of Liberia's capital.
(AP, 8/14/04)
2003 Aug 14, The 16-member
Pacific Islands Forum (Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, the Cook
Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue,
Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Solomon
Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu) planned to create a region-wide
aviation market aimed at encouraging tourism.
(AP, 8/14/03)
2003 Aug 15, Bouncing back from
the largest blackout in U.S. history, cities from the Midwest to
Manhattan restored power to millions of people — only to confront a
second series of woes created in the aftermath of the enormous
outage.
(AP, 8/15/04)
2003 Aug 15, West Virginia
officials suspected that a single sniper had killed 3 people in
recent days near Charleston.
(SFC, 8/16/03, p.A4)
2003 Aug 15, A remote mine,
allegedly triggered by Chechen rebels, killed five Russian soldiers
while troops were conducting a search operation in the breakaway
republic. Chechen rebels also fired automatic weapons and lobbed
grenades at a military commander's office, killing two soldiers and
wounding 10.
(AP, 8/15/03)(AP, 8/16/03)
2003 Aug 15, Saboteurs blew up
a major pipeline and stopped all oil flow from Iraq to Turkey, just
three days after the pipeline between the two countries was
reopened. A following fire raged into the next day. The 600-mile
pipeline runs from the northern city of Kirkuk to the Turkish city
of Ceyhan.
(AP, 8/16/03)
2003 Aug 15, Tens of thousands
Liberian civilians, desperate for food, broke through barricades on
Monrovia's front-line bridges, reuniting the capital after 10 weeks
of rebel siege.
(AP, 8/15/03)
2003 Aug 15, The ruling prince
of Liechtenstein, who garnered controversy in Europe with his push
for more power in the tiny state, announced he would step down and
hand over the reins to his son in one year.
(AP, 8/15/03)
2003 Aug 15, Mexican troops
arrested one of the country's most-wanted drug-traffic suspects,
Armando Valencia, along with seven top figures in his ring in
Tlajomulco near Guadalajara.
(AP, 8/16/03)
2003 Aug 15, A landslide swept
through an army base in northern Nepal killing at least 15 soldiers,
and search teams scoured the debris for more bodies.
(AP, 8/16/03)
2003 Aug 15, Nicanor Duarte was
inaugurated as Paraguay's 47th president. Presidents from Colombia
and other countries in the region gave Duarte his first official
business as they signed the "Declaration of Asuncion" pledging a
political alliance in the war on drugs.
(AP, 8/16/03)
2003 Aug 15, Philippine army
forces in a speedboat killed 4 suspected members of Abu Sayyaf, an
extremist Muslim group, in a clash at sea after getting a tip from
fishermen.
(AP, 8/17/03)
2003 Aug 15, Saudi police
arrested at least 11 suspected militants and seized a large weapons
cache in southern Jazan province that included rockets and explosive
chemicals.
(AP, 8/16/03)
2003 Aug 15, The World Bank
said it is lending Vietnam $100 million over the next 3 years to
support reforms, reduce poverty, develop a market economy and help
devise a modern legal system.
(AP, 8/15/03)
2003 Aug 16, The Midwest and
Northeast were almost fully recovered from the worst power outage in
U.S. history.
(AP, 8/16/04)
2003 Aug 16, Bill Janklow (64),
US Congressional Representative and former South Dakota governor,
ran a stop sign and killed motorcyclist Randolph E. Scott (55) near
Flandreau, SD. On Aug 29 Janklow was charged with manslaughter.
Janklow was found guilty of felony manslaughter on Dec 8 and
announced his resignation effective Jan 20. Janklow was sentenced to
serve 100 days in a county jail.
(SFC, 8/30/03, p.A3)(SFC, 12/9/03, p.A5)(SFC,
1/23/04, p.A3)
2003 Aug 16, Haroldo de Campos
(73), Brazilian poet, died in Sao Paulo. He was the best know of the
Brazilian Concrete poets.
(SFC, 8/26/03, p.A19)
2003 Aug 16, In Nigeria's
southern oil port city of Warri, authorities imposed a nighttime
curfew following gunbattles between rival tribal militias that have
killed at least 20 people.
(AP, 8/16/03)
2003 Aug 16, In southern
Pakistan unidentified gunmen shot to death Ibn-e-Hasan (45), a
Shiite Muslim doctor, sparking rowdy protests by hundreds of youths.
(AP, 8/16/03)
2003 Aug 16, In north central
Uganda rebels from the shadowy Lord's Resistance Army slashed up to
15 people to death with machetes during an attack on the village of
Bata. They also made off with 40 children. All the people killed
were formerly abductees who had been rescued. The army said the next
day it had killed 20 rebel fighters and rescued 127 abducted
children.
(AP, 8/17/03)
2003 Aug 16, Former Ugandan
dictator Idi Amin, blamed for the murder of tens of thousands of his
people in the 1970s, died in a Saudi hospital where he had been
critically ill for weeks. In 2006 the film “The Last King of
Scotland,” was adopted from a novel by Giles Foden that focused on
Idi Amin. The film, directed by Kevin McDonald, featured
Forest Whitaker as Amin.
(AP,
8/16/03)(www.moreorless.au.com/killers/amin.html)(WSJ, 9/29/06,
p.W1)
2003 Aug 16, It was reported
that African swine fever (ASF) had killed half of the pigs in Uganda
this year.
(SFC, 8/16/03, p.A24)
2003 Aug 17, US Federal
investigators joined industry teams in the search for clues into
what triggered the country's worst power blackout in the Midwest and
Northeast as the Bush administration promised to get answers and
address whatever problem was found.
(AP, 8/17/04)
2003 Aug 17, In southeastern
Afghanistan insurgents attacked a police headquarters sparking a
battle that killed at least 15 fighters and seven Afghan police.
(AP, 8/17/03)
2003 Aug 17, Iceland launched
its first whale hunt in more than a decade in the name of scientific
research. The US, Britain and several other governments opposed to
whaling labeled the hunt unnecessary.
(AP, 8/18/03)
2003 cAug 17, Iranians in
Semirom clashed with police over consolidation of the central city
with less-affluent Shahreza. 8 people were left dead.
(WSJ, 8/18/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 17, Saboteurs blew a
hole in a giant Baghdad water main, forcing engineers to cut off
water to the capital. Two ferocious blazes raged out of control
along the pipeline that exports Iraq's oil to the north.
(AP, 8/17/03)
2003 Aug 17, Mazen Dana (43),
a Palestinian cameraman for Reuters, was shot dead by US troops in
Iraq while he filmed outside Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad.
Soldiers mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
The official judgment of the US Military, given five weeks later,
was that The Rules of Engagement required no warning and the tank
crew were justified in shooting Mazen Dana, seeing his TV camera as
a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, or RPG. No disciplinary action
was taken against any US serviceman. Mazen was the 18th foreign
journalist to be killed in Iraq since the occupation by the U.S.
Military on March 20, 2003 and the second Reuters cameraman to be
killed.
(Reuters,
8/18/03)(http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/030605A.shtml)(http://tinyurl.com/lxu5b)
2003 Aug 17, Indonesian
investigators reported the arrest of 9 people in the Aug. 5 attack
on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 people and wounded
nearly 150.
(AP, 8/17/03)
2003 Aug 17, Nepal’s government
forces detained and then shot dead 21 suspected Maoists in the
village of Doramba. In 2005 the major responsible was cashiered and
sentenced to 2 years in prison.
(Econ, 4/16/05,
p.23)(http://hrw.org/reports/2005/nepal0205/2.htm)
2003 Aug 18, Suspected Taliban
insurgents killed at least nine policemen in an ambush in Logar
province's Kharwar village, about 55 miles south of Kabul.
(AP, 8/19/03)
2003 Aug 18, A 24-year-old
woman from China tipped over 303,621 dominos, breaking a
long-standing record for the world's longest solo domino topple.
(AP, 8/18/03)
2003 Aug 18, In Shanxi
province, China, there was a gas explosion in a coal mine where 27
miners were working. At least 25 were killed.
(AP, 8/20/03)
2003 Aug 18, Lucien Abenhaim, a
senior French health official resigned after the health minister
admitted that up to 5,000 people, many of them elderly and alone,
might have died in the recent heat wave.
(AP, 8/19/03)
2003 Aug 18, All of Georgia was
without power for the entire day, and officials in the impoverished
former Soviet republic were struggling to determine the cause of the
blackout.
(AP, 8/19/03)
2003 Aug 18, Israel delayed
plans to hand over Jericho and Qalqiliya, two West Bank towns to
Palestinian control.
(AP, 8/19/03)
2003 Aug 18, In Accra, Ghana,
Liberia's government and rebels signed a peace accord to end 14
years of vicious war with plans for elections in 2 years.
(AP, 8/19/03)
2003 Aug 18, A six-month ordeal
for 14 European tourists kidnapped by Islamic extremists while on
desert safaris in Algeria has ended with their release to officials
in neighboring Mali.
(AP, 8/19/03)
2003 Aug 18, In Venezuela 9
workers died as 8 tried to rescue a comrade who was felled by toxic
industrial gases at an animal feed plant outside Caracas.
(WSJ, 8/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 19, An Ohio auto-parts
worker shot a woman to death and wounded 2 other employees in
Andover.
(WSJ, 8/20/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 19, Afghanistan
celebrated its Independence Day. An explosion ripped through the
home of the brother of President Hamid Karzai.
(AP, 8/19/03)
2003 Aug 19, In northeastern
Brazil federal police and government inspectors freed about 800
slave workers from two farms in Bahia state. Another 200 were freed
a week later. The Brazilian government estimated that some 25,000
people work in slavery conditions in Brazil, most of them in remote
Amazon areas.
(AP, 8/30/03)
2003 Aug 19, Royal Bank of
Canada said it would get $195 million plus interest from Enron Corp.
and others in a settlement agreement related to the sale of 11.5
million common shares of EOG Resources.
(AP, 8/19/03)
2003 Aug 19, Fighting persisted
in Chechnya, with six Russian servicemen killed and 11 others
wounded.
(AP, 8/20/03)
2003 Aug 19, It was reported
that France had provided Alstom SA a $3.9 billion lifeline to save
it from bankruptcy. The bailout was made against EU rules.
(WSJ, 8/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 19, Carlos Roberto
Reina (77), a former political prisoner who rose to Honduras'
presidency (1993), died at his home in Tegucigalpa. After his
presidential term, he was a judge of the Interamerican Court of
Human Rights and an ambassador to France.
(AP, 8/20/03)
2003 Aug 29, A new Iraq Trade
Bank was established to provide letters of credit for big shipments
to Iraq.
(WSJ, 10/28/03, p.A4)
2003 Aug 19, In Baghdad a car
bomb exploded in front of the hotel housing the UN headquarters,
collapsing the front of the building. UN Special Representative
Sergio Vieira de Mello (55) of Brazil and 22 other people were
killed. UNICEF said that its program co-coordinator for Iraq,
Canadian Christopher Klein-Beekman, was among the dead. In 2008
Samantha Power authored “Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello
and the Fight to Save the World.” In 2010 a court sentenced two
Iraqis to life in jail for taking part in the bombing and the kidnap
of two French journalists a year later.
(SFC, 8/20/03, p.A12)(AP, 8/21/03)(SSFC, 2/10/08,
p.M1)(AFP, 9/22/10)
2003 Aug 19, Taha Yassin
Ramadan, a former Iraqi vice president known as "Saddam's knuckles"
for his ruthlessness and No. 20 on the US list of most-wanted
Iraqis, was turned over to US forces in Mosul. Ramadan was tried and
convicted in November 2006 of murder, forced deportation and
torture, and sentenced to life in prison. The court agreed to turn
it to a death sentence in March 2007. Ramadan was hanged before dawn
on Tuesday, March 20, 2007, for his role in the killing of 148 Shia
Iraqis in Dujail.
(AP, 8/19/03)(SFC, 8/20/03,
p.A13)(www.iraqupdates.com/p_articles.php/article/15720)
2003 Aug 19, A Hamas bus
bombing in Jerusalem killed 22 people, including as many as six
children.
(AP, 8/20/03)(AP, 8/19/04)
2003 Aug 19, It was reported
that women in Kenya had begun rebelling against a traditional
"cleansing" ritual whereby new widows were required to sleep with a
designated "cleanser" in order to be inherited by male relatives and
freed of haunting spirits.
(SFC, 8/19/03, p.A10)
2003 Aug 19, Morocco sentenced
four men to death and 83 others to prison in a trial centered on
deadly terror attacks that raised fears Islamic extremism is
spreading.
(AP, 8/19/03)
2003 Aug 19, South African
police and the FBI arrested Craig Michael Pritchert, 41, and Nova
Ester Guthrie, 28, in Capetown. The couple are suspected of armed
robberies in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Texas, and
Oregon between 1993 and 1996.
(AP, 8/21/03)
2003 Aug 20, The US won the
women's overall team gold medal at the World Gymnastics
Championships in Anaheim, Calif.; Romania took the silver medal and
Australia, the bronze.
(AP, 8/21/04)
2003 Aug 20, In Australia
Pauline Hanson, the right-wing firebrand known for her
anti-immigration rhetoric, was sentenced to three years in jail for
fraudulently setting up her One Nation political party and illegally
using electoral funds.
(AP, 8/20/03)
2003 Aug 20, In Chechnya
fighting left 8 Russian soldiers and 12 rebels dead.
(SFC, 8/22/03, p.A9)
2003 Aug 20, In the Dominican
Republic police clashed with rioters who were protesting rising
prices and electrical blackouts, leaving one man dead and a dozen
arrested.
(AP, 8/21/03)
2003 Aug 20, The G-20 (G20) was
formed with Brazil as one of its leading member nations. The group
emerged at the 5th Ministerial WTO conference, held in Cancun,
Mexico from 10 September to 14 September 2003. The other members are
Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, China, Cuba, Egypt, the Philippines,
Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay,
South Africa, Thailand, Tanzania, Uruguay, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
(AP,
9/10/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G20_developing_nations)
2003 Aug 20, Authorities in the
Russian Far East lost contact with a helicopter carrying a regional
governor and 16 other people over the volcanoes of the Kamchatka
peninsula.
(AP, 8/20/03)
2003 Aug 20, Opposition leaders
turned in 2.7 million signatures to demand a referendum on ending
Hugo Chavez's tumultuous four-year presidency in Venezuela.
(AP, 8/20/03)
2003 Aug 21, Alabama's top
judge, Chief Justice Roy Moore, refused to back down in his fight to
keep a Ten Commandments monument and lashed out at his colleagues
who ordered it removed from the rotunda of the state judicial
building.
(AP, 8/21/04)
2003 Aug 21, Paul Hamm put
together a near-perfect routine on the high bar to become the first
American man to win the all-around gold medal at the World
Gymnastics Championship.
(AP, 8/21/08)
2003 Aug 21, Coca Cola signed
basketball prodigy LeBron Jones (18) to a 6-year deal to pitch
Sprite.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R10)
2003 Aug 21, Argentina's Senate
voted overwhelmingly to scrap a pair of amnesty laws dating to the
1980s that had ended trials for human rights abuses committed during
the country's military dictatorship.
(AP, 8/21/03)
2003 Aug 21, The US military
reported that Ali Hassan al-Majid, No. 5 on the list of most-wanted
Iraqis, had been captured. [see Apr 5]
(AP, 8/21/03)
2003 Aug 21, In Ecuador some
1000 Indians and union workers marched through Quito, protesting the
economic policies of President Lucio Gutierrez.
(AP, 8/21/03)
2003 Aug 21, France raised the
death toll from the recent heat wave to as many as 10,000.
(SFC, 8/22/03, p.A9)
2003 Aug 21, Israel killed
Ismail Abu Shanab, a senior Hamas political leader, in a missile
strike, retaliating for a suicide bombing of a bus in which 20
people died including six children. Abu Shanab was widely
regarded as a moderate in the group, and served as a liaison with
Abbas during the prime minister's efforts to persuade Hamas to halt
attacks. Palestinian militants abandoned a two-month-old truce after
Israel killed the Hamas leader.
(AP, 8/21/03)(AP, 8/21/08)
2003 Aug 21, Liberia's rebels
and government chose Gyude Bryant, a gentle-mannered businessman, to
lead a transition administration.
(AP, 8/21/03)
2003 Aug 21, Vladimir Gusinsky,
former Russian media mogul who clashed with the Kremlin and fled
under fraud accusations three years ago, was arrested at the Athens
airport. Russia initially sought Gusinsky on charges of
misrepresenting the assets of his company Media-Most to obtain a
$262 million loan from the government-controlled gas giant Gazprom.
It later added allegations of money laundering.
(AP, 8/24/03)
2003 Aug 22, Roy Moore,
Alabama's chief justice, was suspended for his refusal to obey a
federal court order to remove his Ten Commandments monument from his
courthouse.
(AP, 8/22/03)
2003 Aug 22, In southern
California members of the Earth Liberation Front struck 4 car
dealerships. Damage at a Chevrolet dealership in West Covina was
over $1 million.
(SFC, 8/23/03, p.A2)
2003 Aug 22, Texas Gov. Rick
Perry pardoned 35 people arrested in the 1999 Tulia drug busts and
convicted on the testimony of a lone undercover agent later charged
with perjury. The agent, Tom Coleman, was later found guilty of
aggravated perjury and sentenced to 10 years probation. He's been
appealing his conviction.
(AP, 8/22/08)
2003 Aug 22, In central
Afghanistan government forces fought hundreds of suspected Taliban
insurgents, killing four guerrillas and arresting 13. At least four
government soldiers died.
(AP, 8/23/03)
2003 Aug 22, In Brazil a $6
million rocket exploded on its launch pad while undergoing final
pre-launch tests, killing 21 people. The VLS-1 rocket which was
undergoing tests at the Alcantara Launch Center.
(AP, 8/25/03)
2003 Aug 22, In Canada a
wildfire has forced up to 10,000 people from their homes in Kelowna,
British Columbia.
(Reuters, 8/22/03)
2003 Aug 22, In northern China
a bus swerving to avoid an oil truck ran off a highway and plunged
into a ravine, killing 27 people.
(AP, 8/23/03)
2003 Aug 22, Suspected FARC
rebels killed Carlos Benavidez (25), a journalist and wounded
another, after the vehicle in which the reporters were traveling
failed to stop at a roadblock in southern Colombia.
(AP, 8/24/03)
2003 Aug 22, France announced a
$525 million aid package for farmers whose animals died by the
millions and whose crops withered in a heat wave estimated to have
killed 10,000 people.
(AP, 8/22/03)
2003 Aug 22, Israeli troops
killed a Palestinian militant and wounded two others in a shootout
Friday at a West Bank hospital.
(AP, 8/22/03)
2003 Aug 22, In Nigeria 5 days
of street battles in Warri left as many as 100 dead.
(SFC, 8/23/03, p.A16)
2003 Aug 22, Oslo, Norway, was
ranked the world's most expensive city by Swiss banking giant UBS.
It was followed by New York, Zurich, Switzerland; Copenhagen,
Denmark; London; Basel, Switzerland; Chicago; and Geneva.
(AP, 8/22/03)
2003 Aug 22, Turkish troops
clashed with Kurdish rebels in Batman province. 7 Kurds and 2
Turkish soldiers were killed.
(SFC, 8/23/03, p.A3)
2003 Aug 23, Former priest John
Geoghan (67), a convicted child molester, died after being attacked
by Joseph L. Druce (37), a fellow inmate, at the Souza-Baranowski
state prison in Shirley, Mass. Druce was convicted of murder in
2006.
(SSFC, 8/24/03, p.A1)(SFC, 1/26/06, p.A3)
2003 Aug 23, Marion Hargrove
(83), American writer, died in Long Beach, Calif. She was noted for
the bestselling World War II comedy novel “See Here, Private
Hargrove,” which was made into a 1944 movie with Robert Walker as
Hargrove and Donna Reed as his love interest.
(AP,
8/30/04)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Hargrove)
2003 Aug 23, Taliban fighters
ambushed a truck full of government soldiers in the southern
province of Zabul. Gov. Hafizullah Khan said five soldiers and three
Taliban were killed.
(AP, 8/24/03)
2003 Aug 23, In Iraq a
guerrilla attack killed 3 British soldiers and seriously wounded one
in the southern port city of Basra.
(AP, 8/23/03)(SSFC, 8/24/03, p.A6)
2003 Aug 23, Michael Kijana
Wamalwa (58), Kenya's 8th Vice President, died of an undisclosed
illness after several months of treatment in a hospital near London.
(AP, 8/23/03)
2003 Aug 23, Emergency
officials discovered the wreckage of a helicopter that crashed Aug
20 in the Russian Far East. All 20 people aboard were killed. Among
the dead were Igor Farkhutdinov, governor of the oil-rich Sakhalin
region, and top regional officials and business leaders.
(AP, 8/23/03)
2003 Aug 24, The US Justice
Department reported the crime rate in 2002 was the lowest since
studies began in 1973.
(AP, 8/24/04)
2003 Aug 24, Japan’s
Musashi-Fuchu routed East Boynton Beach, Fla., 10-1 to win the
Little League World Series.
(AP, 8/24/08)
2003 Aug 24, It was reported in
Nature that a chemical in red wine called resveratrol was able to
increase the life a Saccharomyces yeast cell by 80%. A beneficial
effect on humans was implied.
(NW, 9/1/03, p.9)
2003 Aug 24, In Oregon 8
firefighters died as their van hit a tractor-trailer while returning
from fighting a wildfire in Idaho.
(WSJ, 8/25/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 24, John J. Rhodes Jr.
(86), former U.S. House Minority Leader, died in Mesa, Ariz.
(AP, 8/24/04)
2003 Aug 24, Sir Wilfred
Thesiger (93), British writer, explorer and chronicler of the
world's vanishing ways of life, died. Thesiger's most famous books
were "Arabian Sands," about his travels with the Bedu people across
the Empty Quarter of southern Arabia in the 1940s, and "The Marsh
Arabs," the story of the Shiite marsh dwellers of southern Iraq. In
2006 Alexander Maitland authored “Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of the
Great Explorer.”
(AP, 8/26/03)(Econ, 2/18/06, p.79)
2003 Aug 24, Public power went
out in Kabul, Afghanistan, due to lack of water in the local
reservoirs. Return of power was not expected until Dec.
(Econ, 8/30/03, p.30)
2003 Aug 24, In central
Colombia a rebel bomb exploded as passengers were disembarking from
a boat, killing six people, including the woman carrying the device.
(AP, 8/24/03)
2003 Aug 24, A 150-strong US
Marine force ended an 11-day deployment and headed back to warships
off the coast of Monrovia, Liberia.
(AP, 8/24/03)
2003 Aug 24, A twin-engine
turboprop Let L-410 crashed in Haiti and 21 people were killed.
(AP, 8/26/03)
2003 Aug 24, Hurricane
Ignacio sideswiped the southern tip of the Baja California
peninsula.
(AP, 8/24/08)
2003 Aug 24, Palestinian
militants carried out their deepest rocket strike against Israel. A
Qassam-2 rocket, a makeshift weapon produced by the militant Islamic
group Hamas, landed near a lifeguard station on Zikim beach with no
damages or casualties. Israeli missile fire killed 4 Palestinian
militants in Gaza City.
(Reuters, 8/24/03)(SFC, 8/25/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 24, In northern Turkey
a bus in a wedding convoy veered off the road and slammed into a
retaining wall, killing 19 people and injuring several others.
(AP, 8/24/03)
2003 Aug 25, NASA launched the
largest-diameter infrared telescope ever in space. NASA showed the
1st images from the $670 million Spitzer Space Telescope on Dec 18.
(WSJ, 8/26/03, p.A1)(SFC, 12/19/03, p.A2)
2003 Aug 25, In southeastern
Afghanistan US jets hit a Taliban hideout and at least 14 insurgents
were killed.
(SFC, 8/26/03, p.A7)
2003 Aug 25, Brazil's Pres.
Lula da Silva and Peru's Pres. Toledo signed a free-trade agreement
between Peru and Mercosur. Peru planned to join as an associate
member.
(Econ, 8/30/03, p.25)
2003 Aug 25, Canada's Premier
Chretien signed an agreement in the Northwest Territories bestowing
self-government and mineral wealth on the 4,000 Dogrib Indians
(Tlicho First Nation).
(Econ, 8/30/03, p.26)
2003 Aug 25, In India
consecutive bombs exploded in a crowded jewelry market and a
historical landmark in Bombay, killed 53 people, wounding 150
others. The Student’s Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was believed
responsible. Ashrat Shafiq Mohammed Ansari, Syed Mohammed Haneef
Abdul Rahim and his wife Fahmeeda Syed Mohammed Haneef were arrested
under India's tough anti-terrorism law shortly after the attacks.
All 3 were convicted and sentenced to death in 2009 after Judge M.R.
Puranic said they were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned,
Pakistan-based militant group formed in the 1980s.
(WSJ, 8/27/03, p.A1)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.39)(AP,
8/25/08)(AP, 7/27/09)(AP, 8/6/09)
2003 Aug 25, In Ivory Coast 2
French soldiers, part of a peacekeeping force, were killed.
(AP, 8/26/03)
2003 Aug 25, In southern Russia
a series of bomb explosions near two cafes and a bus stop in
Krasnodar, about 750 miles south of Moscow, killed at least three
people and wounding ten others.
(AP, 8/25/03)
2003 Aug 25, In Rwanda voters
lined up before dawn to vote in the country's first real
presidential election. Incumbent President Paul Kagame scored an
overwhelming election win.
(AP, 8/26/03)
2003 Aug 26, In the face of
criticism, President Bush defended his handling of the war and
reconstruction of Iraq, telling an American Legion conference in St.
Louis the fight was essential to the U.S. campaign against
terrorism.
(AP, 8/26/04)
2003 Aug 26, Investigators
concluded that NASA's overconfident management and inattention to
safety doomed the space shuttle Columbia as much as did damage to
the craft.
(AP, 8/26/04)
2003 Aug 26, The CBO forecast a
US deficit of $401 billion this year and $480 billion in 2004.
(WSJ, 8/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 26, The toll of U.S.
troops killed in postwar Iraq surpassed the number killed in major
combat, reaching 139.
(AP, 8/26/03)
2003 Aug 26, In northern Iraq
the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Iraqi Turkmen Front signed
an agreement in Kirkuk aimed at preventing ethnic violence after
clashes left 11 people dead last week.
(AP, 8/28/03)
2003 Aug 26, A hidden cache of
fireworks exploded in a town in China's southeast, killing at least
20 people in the 2nd such disaster to strike the same county in one
month.
(AP, 8/27/03)
2003 Aug 26, Two Russian
military helicopters collided over an airfield in Russia's Far East,
killing five people and injuring one.
(AP, 8/26/03)
2003 Aug 27, The Bush
administration relaxed clean air rules to allow industrial plants to
make upgrades without installing pollution controls.
(SFC, 8/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 27, A moving crew
rolled a massive Ten Commandments monument out of the rotunda of the
Alabama Judicial Building to comply with a federal court order as
protesters knelt, prayed and chanted, "Put it back!"
(AP, 8/27/04)
2003 Aug 27, Oklahoma charged
Bernie Ebbers (62), ex-CEO of WorldCom, and 6 other former
executives with 15 felony violations of state's securities laws. The
charges against Ebbers were dropped when the Federal
government filed on March 2, 2004 security fraud and conspiracy
charges. Ebbers was found guilty of all charges on March 15, 2005.
He was sentenced to 25 years in a federal prison in Louisiana, the
toughest sentence yet among other recent corporate accounting
scandals.
(SFC, 8/28/03,
p.B1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Ebbers#Criminal_charges)
2003 Aug 27, In Chicago
Salvador Tapia (36) shot and killed 6 people inside Windy City Core
Supply Inc. autoparts warehouse. He opened fire on police and was
killed. Tapia had been fired from the auto parts warehouse six
months earlier.
(AP, 8/28/04)
2003 Aug 27, American and
Afghan forces killed about a dozen insurgents and recaptured a
mountain pass in southeastern Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/27/03)
2003 Aug 27, Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder said that Germany was committed to deploying troops to
northern Afghanistan to support reconstruction efforts.
(AP, 8/28/03)
2003 Aug 27, In Nasik, India,
thousands of Hindu pilgrims jostling to reach a river for a
religious festival toppled a bamboo fence, sparking a stampede that
killed at least 39 people, mostly women. At least 125 people were
injured.
(AP, 8/27/03)
2003 Aug 27, In Iraq 2 more US
soldiers were killed in combat, and the international relief agency
Oxfam said it pulled its foreign staff out of Iraq because of the
increasing danger.
(AP, 8/27/03)
2003 Aug 27, Nepal's rebels
announced that they were ending a seven-month cease-fire and
withdrawing from peace talks with the government aimed at closing
seven years of insurgency.
(AP, 8/27/03)
2003 Aug 27, The US and North
Korea held direct talks for the first time in months, meeting for a
half-hour on the sidelines of a six-nation summit in Beijing
designed to resolve the standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear program.
(AP, 8/27/03)
2003 Aug 27, Senegal announced
its 5th government in three years under President Abdoulaye Wade, in
a Cabinet overhaul that followed criticism of Wade's administration
and its handling of recent flooding.
(AP, 8/27/03)
2003 Aug 27, Serbia declared
Kosovo part of its territory.
(WSJ, 8/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 27, Mars came within
34,646,437 miles of Earth, its closest in the past 60 millennia.
(SFC, 8/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 28, The US Library of
Congress said it would name Louise Gluck as the nation's poet
laureate. Her 9 books included "The Wild Iris" (1992).
(SFC, 8/29/03, p.A3)
2003 Aug 28, A US Defense
Department survey found that nearly one in five female Air Force
Academy cadets said they had been sexually assaulted during their
time at the academy.
(AP, 8/28/04)
2003 Aug 28, Two small pipe
bombs exploded at Chiron Corp., Emeryville, Ca. Animal rights
activists were suspected.
(SFC, 8/29/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 28, In Erie, Pa.,
Brian Douglas Wells (46), pizza delivery man, was killed when a bomb
strapped to his chest exploded while under police custody. Wells
claimed a customer had strapped on the bomb and ordered him to rob a
bank. In 2007 a grand jury indicted 2 people in connection with the
crime. Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong (59), described as the ringleader,
pleaded guilty but mentally ill for killing her boyfriend to keep
him silent about the robbery. Diehl-Armstrong was trying to raise
money to hire Kenneth Barnes to kill her father due to an
inheritance dispute. In 2008 Kenneth Barnes (54) pleaded guilty to
conspiracy. In 2010 Diehl-Armstrong was convicted for her role in
the robbery. In 2011 she was sentenced to life plus 30 years in
prison.
(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.A8)(AP, 7/11/07)(SFC, 9/4/08,
p.A7)(SFC, 11/2/10, p.A5)(SFC, 3/1/11, p.A4)
2003 Aug 28, British Prime
Minister Tony Blair denied that the government had "sexed up" a
dossier on Iraq's weapons threat, and said he would have resigned if
it had been true.
(AP, 8/28/04)
2003 Aug 28, The WWF reported
that the hippos of Congo's Virunga national Park have been nearly
wiped out by poachers and civil war.
(WSJ, 8/29/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 28, Akhmad Kadyrov,
the Kremlin-appointed head of Chechnya, said death squads associated
with security forces were seeking to prolong the conflict through
abductions and terror.
(SFC, 8/29/03, p.A8)
2003 Aug 28, A 40-minute
blackout in London, England, stranded hundreds of thousands of
commuters.
(AP, 8/29/03)(WSJ, 8/29/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 28, A North Korean
envoy at 6-nation talks said his nation intends to declare that it
has atomic arms and to test one as proof.
(WSJ, 8/29/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 29, Rep. Bill Janklow,
R-S.D., was charged with felony manslaughter in a car accident that
claimed the life of motorcyclist Randolph E. Scott. Janklow was
later convicted and served 100 days in jail.
(AP, 8/29/04)
2003 Aug 29, Jeffrey Lee
Parson (18), suspected of writing a variant of the "Blaster," a
virus-like computer worm, was arrested in his hometown, the
Minneapolis suburb of Hopkins. He was charged with one count of
intentionally causing or attempting to cause damage to a computer
and faced a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if
convicted. Parson pleaded guilty in August 2004 and was subsequently
sentenced on January 28, 2005 to 18 months in prison followed by a
three-year supervised release program, and was required to do 225
hours of community service. He was ordered to pay restitution of
$497,546.55 to Microsoft Corporation and $1,056 to specific
individuals to have their computer hard drives cleaned.
(SFC, 8/29/03, p.A1)(SFC, 8/30/03,
p.A2)(http://www.rbs2.com/parson2.html)
2003 Aug 29, Six nations trying
to defuse a standoff over North Korea's nuclear program ended their
talks in Beijing with an agreement to keep talking.
(AP, 8/29/04)
2003 Aug 29, France raised the
death toll from the August heat wave to as many as 11,435.
(SFC, 8/30/03, p.A7)
2003 Aug 29, The board of Air
France approved a deal to combine with Dutch KLM under a holding
company to form the world's #3 airline.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R12)
2003 Aug 29, In Haiti's
west-coast city of St. Marc torrential rains burst river banks, left
at least 24 people dead and destroyed dozens of flimsy riverside
shacks.
(AP, 9/2/03)(AP, 9/11/03)
2003 Aug 29, In Najaf, Iraq, a
massive car bomb exploded at the Imam Ali mosque during prayers,
killing Mohammed Bakir al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most important Shiite
clerics, and at least 85 other people. Two Iraqis and two Saudis
were caught soon after. Attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades at
two U.S. convoys in separate ambushes, killing one American soldier
and wounding six.
(SFC, 9/1/03, p.A1)(AP, 8/29/08)
2003 Aug 29, A Jewish settler
was killed and his pregnant wife wounded in a Palestinian shooting
attack. In Jenin Palestinian gunmen fired on Israeli soldiers
manning a lookout in a four-story office building. The violence came
just hours after an Israeli helicopter in southern Gaza fired
missiles to kill a Hamas fugitive as he drove a donkey cart.
(AP, 8/29/03)
2003 Aug 29, Excel Motors, a
fledgling Jamaican automaker, exported the Caribbean island's first
locally manufactured car to the Bahamas. The two-door Island
Cruiser, one of 22 built this year at the company's plant in western
Jamaica, sold for $11,500.
(AP, 8/30/03)
2003 Aug 29, In central Mexico
a truck carrying sulfuric acid collided head-on with a sport-utility
vehicle on a mountain road, killing five people and forcing dozens
of people to hospitals after they inhaled the fumes.
(AP, 8/30/03)
2003 Aug 29, In Nigeria crude
oil spilling from a ruptured Shell Oil pipeline burst into flames
near a southeastern village, scorching yam fields and spreading
thick, black smoke for miles. More than one-tenth of Nigeria's
exports are stolen daily by criminal rings who siphon the fuel from
pipelines using everything from buckets to sophisticated pumps.
(AP, 9/2/03)
2003 Aug 30, Harley-Davidson
celebrated its 100th anniversary in Milwaukee with a parade of
10,000 motorcycles. Some 250,000 bikers packed the roads around
Milwaukee for a 3-day celebration.
(AP, 9/1/03)
2003 Aug 30, A flashflood swept
cars off the Kansas Turnpike in Emporia and at least 4 children were
killed with 2 missing.
(WSJ, 9/2/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 30, In Gerlach,
Nevada, a woman riding an "art car" at the counterculture Burning
Man festival died when she accidentally fell under the vehicle's
wheels. The weeklong festival, theme name "Beyond Belief," peaked
Saturday night with the torching of a 70-foot-high wooden effigy of
a man.
(AP, 8/31/03)(SFC, 9/1/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 30, Robert Abplanalp
(81), inventor and confidant of President Nixon, died in Bronxville,
N.Y.
(AP, 8/30/04)
2003 Aug 30, Charles Bronson
(b.1921), coal miner turned tough-guy actor and star of more than 60
films including the "Death Wish" series, died of pneumonia.
(AP, 9/1/03)(SFC, 9/1/03, p.A2)
2003 Aug 30, In Botswana a
former bank manager, draped in a ceremonial leopard skin, was
installed as the first female paramount chief. Mosadi Seboko took
over as the highest-ranking chief of the Balete people.
(AP, 8/30/03)
2003 Aug 30, An Israeli
helicopter gunship fired several missiles at a Palestinian car
driving through a refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, killing
two Hamas militants.
(AP, 8/30/03)
2003 Aug 30, In India 2
suspected Islamic militants were killed in a battle with New Delhi
police. Indian police claimed to have killed Ghazi Baba, the head of
the Jaish-e-Mohammed militant group, during a fierce gun battle in
Srinagar. Baba was said to be the mastermind behind several terror
attacks including the December 2001 attack on India's Parliament.
(AP, 8/30/03)
2003 Aug 30, In northern India
a bus carrying 40 passengers plunged into a river in a remote hilly
area. There was no immediate word on casualties.
(AP, 8/30/03)
2003 Aug 30, A Russian
nuclear-powered submarine, K-159, sank in the Barents Sea as it was
being towed to a scrapyard, killing 9 of the 10 sailors on board.
(AP, 8/31/03)
2003 Aug 30, The World Trade
Organization agreed to let impoverished nations import cheaper
copies of patented medicines needed to fight killer diseases.
(AP, 8/30/04)
2003 Aug 31, In Gerlach,
Nevada, the "Temple of Honor" by David Best went up in flames. Some
30,500 people attended the weeklong "Burning Man" event.
(SFC, 9/1/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 31, The burned body of
Katie Sepich (22) was found at an old dump in Las Cruces, NM. She
had been raped and strangled earlier that same day. In 2006 DNA
evidence identified Gabriel Adrian Avila, already in prison for
burglary and assault, as her killer.
(SFC, 2/28/07, p.B5)(http://tinyurl.com/yvb63k)
2003 Aug 31, In Afghanistan 2
US soldiers were killed in Paktika province.
(SFC, 9/1/03, p.A3)
2003 Aug 31, It was reported
that Congo tribal fighters killed at least 200 people over the last
month and abducted scores more during a series of attacks that
destroyed, Fataki, a northeast town once controlled by a rival
tribe.
(AP, 8/31/03)
2003 Aug 31, Vowing revenge and
beating their chests, more than 300,000 Shiites marched behind the
rose-strewn coffin of a beloved cleric, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir
al-Hakim, who had been assassinated in a car bombing in Najaf, Iraq.
(AP, 8/31/04)
2003 Aug 31, Libyan leader
Moammar Gadhafi said a second agreement over compensation has been
reached between his country and the families of 170 victims of a
French airliner that exploded in 1989.
(AP, 9/1/03)
2003 Aug 31, At least 675,000
people in Malawi urgently need food aid despite the country's good
harvest, the UN World Food Program reported.
(AP, 8/31/03)
2003 Aug 31, In Taiwan a fire
engulfed an apartment building on the outskirts of Taipei before
dawn, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens.
(AP, 8/31/03)
2003 Aug, Toyota sold more cars
in America than did Chrysler.
(Econ, 10/11/03, p.82)
2003 Aug, Skype released the
1st version of its software which allowed people to make free voice
and video calls over the internet. Niklas Zennstrom (b.1966) of
Sweden and Janus Friis (b.1976) of Denmark co-founded Skype, an
internet telephony company shortly after moving to London. The Skype
software was developed by Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu and
Jaan Tallinn, who were also behind the peer-to-peer file sharing
software Kazaa.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.79)(Econ, 8/6/11,
p.46)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype)
2003 Aug, British regulators
disconnected the 47-year-old 192 directory assistance number in a
bid to increase competition. Some 57 six-digit phone numbers for
national assistance followed with complex charges and numerous
errors.
(WSJ, 10/24/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug, British Petroleum
bought half of Russia’s Tyumen Oil Co. for $6.75 billion. TNK-BP was
originally formed from the assets of TNK (Tyumen Oil Co), Onako,
Sidanco and the majority of BP’s Russian assets.
(Econ, 5/22/04, Survey
p.11)(http://tinyurl.com/4lfczjv)
2003 Aug, Researchers from
India’s nongovernment Center for Science and Environment said Coke
and Pepsi products contain high levels of pesticide residue. A high
court in Kerala, India, soon ordered Coca Cola to shut down a $25
million plant due to local complaints of excess water use. Villagers
also complained that waste from the plant had contaminated drinking
water. Activists left alone a nearby Indian brewery.
(SSFC, 3/6/05, p.A3)(WSJ, 9/12/06, p.A6)
2003 Aug, Honduras passed an
anti-gang law. Gang leaders faced 9-12 years in prison.
(SSFC, 9/28/03, p.A8)
2003 Aug, Odhiambo Mbai, Kenya
political scientist, was assassinated. He was a key man in efforts
to redraft the constitution.
(Econ, 10/11/03, p.50)
2003 Aug, In Switzerland Sheikh
Falah bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the brother of the president
of the United Arab Emirates, hit an Italian-American, Silvano Orsi,
with the buckle of his belt in a hotel. in a trial in June, 2008, he
was ordered to pay 540,000 Swiss francs (337,000 euros, 532,000
dollars) by the court, suspended for three years. The sheikh was
also sentenced to pay legal costs of nearly 3,000 Swiss francs. In
2009 he was acquitted on appeal against the imposed fines.
(AFP,
3/28/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falah_bin_Zayed_bin_Sultan_Al_Nahyan)
2003 Aug, Vietnam took
possession of the 1st of 4 new Boeing 777-200 ER jetliners purchased
in part with a loan from the Export-Import Bank of the US.
(SSFC, 8/24/03, p.I6)
2003 Sep 1, During a Labor Day
trip to Richfield, Ohio, President Bush announced he was creating a
high-level government post to nurture the manufacturing sector.
(AP, 9/1/04)
2003 Sep 1, Actor Rand Brooks
(84), who played Scarlett O'Hara's first husband in "Gone With the
Wind," died in Santa Ynez, Calif.
(AP, 9/1/04)
2003 Sep 1, Suspected Taliban
fighters attacked a government checkpoint and ambushed another group
of Afghan soldiers along the main road linking the south with the
capital, killing at least eight soldiers over the last 2 days.
(AP, 9/1/03)
2003 Sep 1, State media
reported that China will cut an additional 200,000 soldiers as part
of efforts to modernize its armed forces.
(AP, 9/1/03)
2003 Sep 1, The U.S.-picked
Iraqi Governing Council named a new Cabinet.
(AP, 9/1/04)
2003 Sep 1, Arab TV broadcast
an audiotape purportedly from Saddam Hussein denying any involvement
in a bombing in Najaf, Iraq, that killed a beloved Shiite cleric.
(AP, 9/1/04)
2003 Sep 1, Israeli helicopters
fired four missiles at a car carrying Hamas militants, killing at
least one of them and wounding 26 on a crowded Gaza City.
(AP, 9/1/03)
2003 Sep 1, A rebel group
trying to win independence for the Western Sahara has released 243
Moroccan prisoners, some of whom have been held for nearly three
decades. It was the first prisoner release since the UN Security
Council voted in July to urge Morocco and the Polisario to accept a
new plan to settle the long-running dispute over the Western Sahara.
(AP, 9/3/03)
2003 Sep 1, Marijuana went on
sale Monday at Dutch pharmacies to help bring relief to thousands of
patients suffering from cancer, AIDS or multiple sclerosis.
(AP, 9/1/03)
2003 Sep 2, A federal appeals
court in San Francisco threw out more than 100 death sentences in
Arizona, Montana and Idaho because the inmates had been sent to
death row by judges instead of juries.
(AP, 9/2/04)
2003 Sep 2, A car slid off a
boat ramp into Clinton Lake, Ill., and sank under the water. Two
people allegedly made it out of the car before it sank. They were
Amanda Hamm (27) and her boyfriend Maurice Lagrone Jr. (28). Three
children were trapped in the car: Christopher Hamm (6), Austin Brown
(3), and Kyleigh Hamm, age 23 months. Hamm and Lagrone were later
charged with murder. In 2007 Amanda Hamm was sentenced to 10 years
in prison. Lagrone was convicted earlier of 1st degree murder and
sentenced to life.
(SFC, 2/2/07,
p.A3)(www.bellaonline.com/articles/art24538.asp)
2003 Sep 2, Typhoon Dujuan
slammed into the southern Chinese coastal city of Shenzhen, killing
at least 20 people and causing extensive damage to parts of the
country's showcase economic development zone.
(AP, 9/3/03)
2003 Sep 2, The official Xinhua
News Agency reported that heavy flooding in northern China had
killed 38 people with another 34 people missing since Aug 24.
(AP, 9/2/03)
2003 Sep 2, In China's Inner
Mongolia a locust plague, Oedaleus decorus asiaticus, was reported
to have affected some 47 million acres of grasslands.
(WSJ, 9/2/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 2, Two South China
tigers, the first ever to leave the country, arrived in South Africa
as part of a project to save the endangered species.
(AP, 9/3/03)
2003 Sep 2, Ptolemy Alexander
Reid (85), former Guyanese Prime Minister, died after suffering a
stroke. Reid was named prime minister under President Forbes
Burnham, and held the post from 1980 to 1984.
(AP, 9/5/03)
2003 Sep 2, In eastern India an
overcrowded boat capsized in the swollen Kosi River of Bihar state,
and at least 25 people were missing and feared drowned.
(AP, 9/3/03)
2003 Sep 2, In Indonesia a
court in Jakarta convicted radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir of
inciting others to overthrow the government. He was sentenced to
four years in prison for sedition. The court threw out charges that
he belonged to al-Qaida's main Asian ally. His conviction was later
overturned after he'd spent more than two years behind bars.
(AP, 9/2/03)(AP, 9/2/08)
2003 Sep 2, Saudi Arabia's
Crown Prince Abdullah met Russia's Pres. Putin on the first visit to
post-Soviet Russia by a Saudi leader, aimed at coordinating oil
exports and soothing Russian concerns about alleged funding of
Chechen rebels by Saudi charities.
(AP, 9/2/03)
2003 Sep 2, In northeastern
Uganda rebels shot or clubbed to death 25 people on a bus and then
set the vehicle ablaze.
(AP, 9/2/03)
2003 Sep 3, President Bush
signed legislation to begin free trade with Singapore and Chile.
(AP, 9/3/04)
2003 Sep 3, US federal
authorities raided the Bay Area laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) for
suspected steroids. On Oct 16 Olympic drug-testing officials
announced that they believed the lab was a source for the steroid
tetrahydrogestrinone (THG).
(SSFC, 10/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 3, NY Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer charged hedge fund Canary Capital with illegal mutual
fund trading. Other funds were also named.
(WSJ, 10/29/03, p.C1)
2003 Sep 3, Paul Hill, a former
minister who said he murdered an abortion doctor and his bodyguard
to save the lives of unborn babies, was executed in Florida by
injection, becoming the first person put to death in the United
States for anti-abortion violence.
(AP, 9/3/04)
2003 Sep 3, The Bank of Canada
cut interest rates by 25 basis points to 2.75 percent on because of
lower-than-expected inflation as well as sagging growth.
(Reuters, 9/3/03)
2003 Sep 3, In China Typhoon
Dujuan killed at least 32 people.
(WSJ, 9/4/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 3, North Korea's
parliament re-elected Kim Jong Il as the isolated country's top
leader and approved his government's decision to "keep and increase
its nuclear deterrent force" to counter what it calls a hostile U.S.
policy.
(AP, 9/3/03)
2003 Sep 3, In southern Russia
at Pyatigorsk two bombs exploded under a student-filled commuter
train, killing at least 4 people and wounding 44.
(AP, 9/3/03)(SFC, 9/4/03, p.A6)
2003 Sep 4, Miguel Estrada,
whose nomination became a flash point for Democratic opposition to
President Bush's judicial choices, withdrew from consideration for
an appeals court seat after Republicans failed in seven attempts to
break a Senate filibuster.
(AP, 9/4/04)
2003 Sep 4, The US House agreed
to a 2.2 percent pay raise for Congress, enough to boost lawmakers'
annual salaries to about $158,000 next year.
(AP, 9/4/03)
2003 Sep 4, Pres. Bush signed
the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) into law. It required the
collection of data on sexual abuse in prison and the creation of a
commission to recommend ways of prevention.
(Econ, 8/6/05,
p.25)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_Rape_Elimination_Act_of_2003)(Econ,
5/7/11, p.32)
2003 Sep 4, Verizon
Communications and two unions, the Communications Workers of America
and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, reached a
tentative, five-year contract agreement after four months of talks.
(AP, 9/4/04)
2003 Sep 4, Researchers
reported that the hormone YY3-36 appeared to curb the appetite of
obese people.
(SFC, 9/4/03, p.A3)
2003 Sep 4, British and
Colombian authorities said they had seized nearly $7 billion in
securities from an international drug and money-laundering ring.
Authorities arrested 14 alleged members of the ring, 10 in England,
two in Colombia and two in Ecuador.
(AP, 9/4/03)
2003 Sep 4, Mario Monteforte
Toledo, Guatemalan writer and activist, died. His work included the
1952 novel "En Donde Acaban los Caminos" (Where the Roads End).
(SFC, 9/5/03, p.A23)
2003 Sep 5, A roller coaster
derailed at Southern California's Disneyland theme park, killing one
man and injuring 10 other people, including a 9-year-old.
(Reuters, 9/5/03)
2003 Sep 5, Gisele MacKenzie
(76), former TV star, died. She starred on "Your Hit Parade" from
1953-1957, after which she starred in NBC's "The Gisele MacKenzie
Show."
(SFC, 9/6/03, p.A16)
2003 Sep 5, Afghan forces in
the southern province of Zabul captured five fugitive Taliban
militants, including an insurgent leader, after a battle that killed
scores of rebels. Coalition forces killed Mullah Abdul Razzaq
Hafees, a Taliban commander, and 19 other militants in fighting in
southern Afghanistan.
(AP, 9/6/03)(AP, 10/6/03)
2003 Sep 5, Hurricane Fabian
slammed into Bermuda killing 4 people. [see Sep 6]
(AP, 9/5/08)
2003 Sep 5, Statistics Canada
said the nation's unemployment rate rose to 8.0% in August, an
18-month high.
(AP, 9/5/03)
2003 Sep 5, Costa Rica's Arenal
Volcano spewed lava, rocks and ash in its strongest eruption in more
than two years.
(AP, 9/5/03)
2003 Sep 5, Wayan Limbak (106),
a Balinese dancer who helped create the island's famous Monkey
Dance, died. Working with German painter Walter Spies in the 1930s,
Limbak adopted a traditional exorcism ritual to invent the dance,
known in Indonesian as Kecak.
(AP, 9/6/03)
2003 Sep 5, Israeli commandos
killed a Hamas bombmaker in a firefight and pulverized the West Bank
apartment building in which he had been hiding.
(AP, 9/5/04)
2003 Sep 5, European Union
foreign ministers met in Riva del Garda, Italy, to discuss Iraq, the
tattered Mideast peace plan and their bloc's draft constitution as
some 500 anti-globalization protesters blocked main roads to an
Italian Alps town.
(AP, 9/6/03)
2003 Sep 6, Fabian, the most
powerful hurricane to hit Bermuda in 50 years pushed away from the
British territory after deadly winds split trees and swept trucks
off roads. Four people were missing and feared dead.
(AP, 9/6/03)
2003 Sep 6, In central Colombia
soldiers killed at least 25 suspected rebels and paramilitary
fighters in three military operations.
(AP, 9/6/03)
2003 Sep 6, The European Union
said it will declare all wings of the militant Palestinian group
Hamas a terrorist organization and freeze its assets after dozens of
deadly attacks in Israel.
(AP, 9/6/03)
2003 Sep 6, In
Indian-controlled Kashmir a bomb targeting an army convoy exploded
in the main wholesale market for fruit, killing six people,
including an army officer, and wounding 25.
(AP, 9/6/03)
2003 Sep 6, An Israeli missile
strike on Gaza City lightly wounded Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed
Yassin, the highest-ranking member of the militant group to be
targeted by Israel in recent weeks.
(AP, 9/6/03)
2003 Sep 6, Palestinian Prime
Minister Mahmoud Abbas, whose support was considered essential to
any prospect of peace success, submitted his resignation.
(AP, 9/6/03)
2003 Sep 6, In Taiwan thousands
of pro-independence activists marched in the capital, demanding that
the island's official name be changed from the Republic of China to
Taiwan.
(AP, 9/6/03)
2003 Sep 7, President Bush
spoke on national TV and said he would ask Congress for $87 billion
to fight terrorism. He cautioned that the struggle "will take time
and require sacrifice."
(AP, 9/8/03)
2003 Sep 7, The top American
commander in Afghanistan said Taliban fighters, paid and trained by
al-Qaida, were pouring into Afghanistan from Pakistan.
(AP, 9/8/03)
2003 Sep 7, Goran Markovic's
"The Cordon", a film from Serbia and Montenegro about the behavior
of policemen during the demonstrations against president Slobodan
Milosevic in 1997, won the top prize at the Montreal film festival.
(Reuters, 9/7/03)
2003 Sep 7, The Russian drama
"The Return" won the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion for best
picture. Vladimir Girin (15), star of the film, drowned shortly
after the film was shot. Randa Chahal Sabbag, Lebanese filmmaker,
won the Silver Lion prize for her film “Le cerf-volant” (The Kite),
a love story between a Lebanese girl and an Israeli border guard.
(SFC, 9/8/03, p.D5)(WPR, 3/04, p.45)
2003 Sep 7, Warren Zevon (56),
songwriter, died in West Hollywood. His work included the 1970s rock
hit "Werewolves of London."
(AP, 9/8/03)(WSJ, 9/9/03, p.D6)
2003 Sep 7, Fighting in
northeast Colombia killed seven army soldiers and at least eight
rebels.
(AP, 9/8/03)
2003 Sep 7, A ferry boat
traveling from Indonesia's Bali island sank, killing at least six
people and leaving dozens missing.
(AP, 9/7/03)
2003 Sep 7, Mamohato Bereng
Seeiso (62), the queen mother of the tiny mountain kingdom of
Lesotho, died after collapsing in a church outside the capital.
(AP, 9/8/03)
2003 Sep 7, Macedonian police
clashed with ethnic Albanian militants in the volatile north, and
reported killing several men in what they said was a major sweep
against groups that threaten the Balkan country's fragile peace.
(AP, 9/7/03)
2003 Sep 7, Palestinian Pres.
Yasser Arafat tapped the parliament speaker, Ahmed Qureia, to take
over as prime minister following the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas.
(SFC, 9/8/03, p.A1)(AP, 9/7/08)
2003 Sep 8, The Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA), the music industry's largest
trade group, filed 261 copyright lawsuits across the country against
Internet users for trading songs online.
(SFC, 9/9/03, p.A1)(AP, 9/8/08)
2003 Sep 8, In NYC Harvey Milk
High School for gay, bisexual and transgender kids opened in
Greenwich Village. It was named after the San Francisco
supervisor killed in 1978.
(SFC, 9/9/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 8, NASA presented a
"return to flight" plan for the shuttle fleet.
(WSJ, 9/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 8, In Afghanistan
suspected Taliban rebels stopped a car carrying Afghans working for
a Danish aid organization, tied them up, then shot four of them to
death.
(AP, 9/10/03)
2003 Sep 8, In Ecuador
spokesman Marcelo Cevallos said Pres. Lucio Gutierrez will set a
national example and start showing up on time for meetings and
appointments in an effort to combat a national lack of punctuality.
Cevallos apologized to the audience for showing up late for the
interview.
(AP, 9/9/03)
2003 Sep 8, Leni Riefenstahl
(101), filmmaker, died in Bavaria. Her depiction of Hitler's
Nuremberg rally, "Triumph of the Will," was renowned and despised as
the best propaganda film ever made. In 2007 Steven Bach authored
“Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl” and Jurgen Trimborn
authored “Leni Riefenstahl: A Life.”
(AP, 9/9/03)(SFC, 9/10/03, p.A19)(Econ, 3/10/07,
p.82)
2003 Sep 8, Ariel Sharon flew
to New Delhi for the first-ever visit to India by an Israeli prime
minister, hoping to cement blossoming defense and trade ties.
(AP, 9/8/03)
2003 Sep 8, In eastern India
suspected communist rebels detonated a land mine under a passing
police vehicle, killing 12 officers.
(AP, 9/8/03)
2003 Sep 8, In Mali
authorities said torrential rains have killed scores and caused
heavy property damage, warning of worse to come if the Niger River
spills its banks.
(AP, 9/8/03)
2003 Sep 8, In central Nigeria
3 buses and a truck collided, killing more than 100 people in the
impact and the fiery explosion that followed.
(AP, 9/8/03)
2003 Sep 8, Palestinian
parliament speaker Ahmed Qureia said he will accept the prime
minister's job only if Washington guarantees Israeli compliance with
a US-backed peace plan, including a halt to military strikes.
(AP, 9/8/03)
2003 Sep 8, Singapore health
officials confirmed that a local patient tested positive for severe
acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, the 1st new case of the disease
in over 5 months.
(AP, 9/8/03)(WSJ, 9/10/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 9, The Catholic
archdiocese of Boston agreed to pay $85 million to settle claims by
more than 550 people who said they were sexually abused by priests.
(SFC, 9/10/03, p.A3)
2003 Sep 9, The WSJ disclosed
that Dick Grasso, Chairman of the NYSE, had a retirement package
close to $140 million along with entitlements to an additional $48
million. His 2001 pay exceeded $30 million with a base pay of $1.4
million. Grasso soon decided to forego the $48 million undisclosed
compensation. In 2007 Charles Gasparino authored “King of the Club:
Richard Grasso and the Survival of the New York Stock Exchange.
(WSJ, 9/11/03, p.C1)(WSJ, 5/25/04, p.C1)(WSJ,
11/21/07, p.D10)
2003 Sep 9, Alabama voters
rejected Amendment One by a margin of 2 to 1. The liberal tax
measure was endorsed by Gov. Bob Riley and based on Judeo-Christian
ethics.
(SSFC, 12/12/04, p.A14)
2003 Sep 9, Edward Teller (95),
Hungarian-born pioneer in molecular physics and dubbed the "father
of the H-bomb" for his role in the early development of nuclear
weapons, died.
(SFC, 9/10/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 9, Argentina missed a
$2.9 billion payment to the IMF.
(Econ, 9/13/03, p.32)
2003 Sep 9, France's leading
undertaker estimated the country's death toll from a summer heat
wave at 15,000.
(AP, 9/9/04)
2003 Sep 9, Israeli troops
killed three Palestinians, including a 12-year-old boy, in an arrest
raid in the West Bank city of Hebron, as Israel signaled both
reluctant acquiescence and disapproval of the Palestinians'
candidate for prime minister. In Jerusalem twin suicide bombings, 5
hours apart, killed 16 Israelis. One suicide bomber chose a
nightspot packed with young Israelis, the other a bus stop where
soldiers were waiting for their ride homes.
(AP, 9/9/03)
2003 Sep 9, The European
Union's high court ruled that Italy and other EU governments can
temporarily ban genetically modified foods while they examine health
risks, but must provide "detailed grounds," not general fears, to do
so.
(AP, 9/9/03)
2003 Sep 9, In western
Venezuelan 2 passengers buses crashed in separate highway accidents,
killing 45 people and injuring dozens of others.
(AP, 9/9/03)
2003 Sep 10, Ben Glisan, former
Enron treasurer, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to commit
fraud and was sentenced to 5 years in federal prison.
(WSJ, 9/11/03, p.A3)
2003 Sep 10, The first
video image of Osama bin Laden in nearly two years was broadcast on
Al-Jazeera TV.
(AP, 9/10/08)
2003 Sep 10, Argentina
refinanced $21 billion in debt including $12.3 billion with the IMF.
(Econ, 9/13/03, p.32)
2003 Sep 10, A Bangladesh court
convicted and sentenced five zookeepers to 14 years in prison for
killing three tigers in 1996 and planning to sell their skins.
(AP, 9/10/03)
2003 Sep 10, In northeast
Colombia a bomb strapped to a horse exploded in a plaza in a small
town, killing at least eight people, including a toddler, and
injuring 20 others.
(AP, 9/10/03)
2003 Sep 10, Imam Samudra (33),
the man accused of being the "intellectual mastermind" of last
year's Oct 12 Bali nightclub bombings was sentenced to face a firing
squad after being found guilty of the attack that killed 202 people.
(AP, 9/10/03)
2003 Sep 10, In Irbil, Iraq, a
suicide car bomber struck the US intelligence headquarters, killing
three Iraqis, including a 12-year-old boy.
(AP, 9/10/03)(WSJ, 9/11/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 10, Israeli warplanes
flattened the home of senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar with a
half-ton bomb, wounding him and killing his eldest son and a
bodyguard, in retaliation for twin suicide bombings that killed 15
Israelis a day earlier.
(AP, 9/10/03)
2003 Sep 10, Ivory Coast
created a commission made up of members of the army and rebel
movements to chart the course of disarmament and reunification after
a 9-month civil war.
(AP, 9/10/03)
2003 Sep 10, In Cancun, Mexico,
the WTO began its fifth ministerial meeting, with trade ministers
from every country expected to attend a five-day gathering to thrash
out many problems surrounding the latest "round" of trade
liberalization talks.
(AP, 9/10/03)
2003 Sep 10, In Puebla, Mexico,
a clandestine fireworks factory exploded, killing at least six
people and injuring 12 others.
(AP, 9/10/03)
2003 Sep 10, Swedish Foreign
Minister Anna Lindh was stabbed in the stomach and wrist at an
exclusive department store in downtown Stockholm. She died the next
day. In 2003 Mijailo Mijailovic, a 25-year-old Swede of Yugoslav
origin, confessed to the murder. In 2004 Mijailovic was sentenced to
life in prison.
(AP, 9/10/03)(AP, 9/11/03)(AP, 1/7/04)(SFC,
3/24/04, p.A8)
2003 Sep 11, In Nogales, New
Mexico, federal agents discovered a 985-foot tunnel to Mexico
equipped to move drugs on railcars.
(SSFC, 9/14/03, p.A3)
2003 Sep 11, The Seattle
Archdiocese agreed to pay $7.87 million to settle lawsuits brought
by 15 men who said they were molested by the same priest.
(SFC, 9/12/03, p.A3)
2003 Sep 11, Actor John Ritter
(b.1948), who gained fame playing bumbling and lovable characters in
a pair of hit TV comedies decades apart, collapsed while he was on
the set of his new series and died suddenly of a heart problem.
(Reuters, 9/12/03)
2003 Sep 11, In Canada 10
people were killed in two separate plane crashes in Northern
Ontario.
(AP, 9/12/03)
2003 Sep 11, The Israeli
security Cabinet decided in principle to authorize the expulsion of
Yasser Arafat. The Cabinet also decided that the construction of the
security fence between Israel and the West Bank will be accelerated.
(AP, 9/11/03)(SFC, 9/12/03, p.A3)
2003 Sep 11, The Italian Health
Ministry said at least 4,175 more elderly Italians died in the
summer heat wave that scorched Europe this year compared with the
same period last year.
(AP, 9/11/03)
2003 Sep 11, In Russia the
36-card set "United Cards of America," featuring the key figures in
Washington, went up for sale.
(SFC, 9/15/03, p.A2)
2003 Sep 11, Swaziland's King
Mswati III selected his 12th bride, less than a week after he picked
bride No. 11 from thousands of young Swazi maidens.
(AP, 9/11/03)
2003 Sep 11, Sweden's Foreign
Minister Anna Lindh died after being stabbed Sep 10 by a mystery
attacker.
(Reuters, 9/11/03)
2003 Sep 11, Weary and
trembling, Pope John Paul II struggled to greet Slovaks as he began
a four-day visit.
(AP, 9/11/03)
2003 Sep 12, A climate
prediction experiment, expected to involve two million people around
the world, was launched. The program, downloaded from
(www.climateprediction.net) and ran on an ordinary desktop or laptop
computer.
(Reuters, 9/11/03)
2003 Sep 12, Johnny Cash (71),
singer, died. His rough, unsteady voice championed the downtrodden
and reached across generations with songs like "Ring of Fire," "I
Walk the Line" and "Folsom Prison Blues."
(AP, 9/12/03)(SFC, 9/13/03, p.A12)
2003 Sep 12, US soldiers
mistakenly opened fire on uniformed Iraqi policemen chasing highway
bandits at night, killing eight officers and a Jordanian security
guard in Fallujah.
(AP, 9/12/04)
2003 Sep 12, In Colombia 4
Israelis, 2 Britons, a German and a Spaniard were kidnapped near
archaeological ruins high in the Sierra Nevada, about 465 miles
north of Bogota. 2 of the tourists were freed Nov 24. The
other 4 were released Dec 22. In 2004 the German government billed
Reinhilt Weigel $17,630 to cover the cost of a helicopter used to
bring her part of the way home, after she was released by rebels. In
2009 she lost her appeal.
(AP, 9/15/03)(WSJ, 11/25/03, p.A1)(AP,
12/23/03)(SFC, 5/29/09, p.A2)
2003 Sep 12, In Bombay
(Mumbai), India, police shot and killed a man believed to have
masterminded car bombings in Bombay last month that killed 53
people. Naseer and his aide were traveling in a car that carried
explosives, guns and detonators when police intercepted it.
(AP, 9/12/03)
2003 Sep 12, The Palestinians
urged the UN Security Council to demand that Israel not expel Yasser
Arafat and halt any threats to his safety.
(AP, 9/12/03)
2003 Sep 12, In Portugal's
Madeira Islands a small airplane crashed into the sea, apparently
killing all nine people on board. The Beechcraft 200 was carrying
eight Spaniards and a British pilot from the islands off northwest
Africa to the southern Spanish city of Malaga.
(AP, 9/12/03)
2003 Sep 12, In Rwanda Paul
Kagame took the oath of office as the nation's first popularly
elected president since the 1994 genocide.
(AP, 9/12/03)
2003 Sep 12, Typhoon Maemi, the
most powerful ever to ever hit South Korea, flipped over a floating
hotel, twisted massive cranes, killed at least 117 people. The main
port of Busan reported $1.3 billion in damage.
(WSJ, 9/16/03, p.A1)(AP, 9/13/04)
2003 Sep 12, The UN Security
Council lifted 11-year-old sanctions on Libya after Moammar
Gadhafi's government took responsibility for bombing a Pan Am jet
over Scotland and agreed to pay the victims' families $2.7 billion.
(AP, 9/12/03)
2003 Sep 13, In Las Vegas,
Sugar Shane Mosley beat Oscar De La Hoya, winning a close but
unanimous decision to take the WBC and WBA 154-pound titles.
(AP, 9/13/04)
2003 Sep 13, The California
Democratic Party voted to endorse Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante while
continuing to support Gov. Gray Davis in the Oct. 7 recall election.
(AP, 9/13/04)
2003 Sep 13, Frank O'Bannon
(73), Indiana Gov. since 1996, died. He had suffered a massive
stroke in his Chicago hotel room on Sep 8. He was succeeded by Lt.
Gov. Joe Kernan.
(SFC, 9/9/03, p.A3)
2003 Sep 13, In
Indian-controlled Kashmir suspected Islamic rebels killed a former
lawmaker as gunbattles and other violence escalated across
Indian-controlled Kashmir, leaving 20 people dead and 37 wounded.
(AP, 9/13/03)
2003 Sep 13, Angry mourners
swarmed Fallujah, Iraq, a day after eight Iraqi police were killed
in a friendly fire incident involving U.S. troops; the U.S. military
apologized for the deaths.
(AP, 9/13/04)
2003 Sep 13, In the southern
Philippines soldiers killed two suspected members of the Muslim
extremist Abu Sayyaf group and seized pictures of al-Qaida chief
Osama bin Laden and documents in Arabic language after storming a
rebel camp.
(AP, 9/13/03)
2003 Sep 14, Japanese filmmaker
Takeshi Kitano's "Zatoichi," the story of a mythical blind
swordsman, and Denys Arcand's "The Barbarian Invasions" took top
awards at the Toronto International Film Festival.
(Reuters, 9/14/03)
2003 Sep 14, Illinois Gov. Rod
Blagojevich directed the state Special Advocate to draft a plan for
busing inexpensive medications from Canada for state employees and
retirees.
(SFC, 9/15/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 14, The Lasker
foundation presented awards for medical research to Dr. Robert
Roeder for his work on gene transcription, and to Dr. Marc Feldman
and Sir Ravinder Maini for their anti-TVF work that led to drugs for
treating rheumatoid arthritis.
(SSFC, 9/14/03, p.A2)
2003 Sep 14, Yetunde Price
(31), older sister of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, was
shot and killed in LA County. Suspect Aaron Michael Hammer (24) was
arrested 2 days later.
(SFC, 9/16/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 14, Hafiz Abdul Rahim,
a top commander of the former Taliban regime who allegedly led rebel
fighters in southern Afghanistan, was killed along with 14 other
fighters in a shootout with Afghan forces.
(AP, 9/16/03)
2003 Sep 14, Estonians passed a
referendum to join the European Union.
(AP, 9/15/03)
2003 Sep 14, In the West Africa
country of Guinea-Bissau the army launched a coup, arresting the
president and ordering government ministers detained. Verissimo
Correia Seabre and fellow senior officers arrested the elected
president, Kumba Yala.
(AP, 9/14/03)
2003 Sep 14, Lt. Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez, the US military commander in Iraq, authorized the use of
loud rock music, "to create fear, disorient ... and prolong capture
shock." The tactic became common in the US war on terror, with
forces systematically using loud music on hundreds of detainees in
Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
(AP, 12/10/08)
2003 Sep 14, In Iraq a roadside
bomb attack on a convoy in the troubled city of Fallujah killed one
US soldier and injured three others.
(AP, 9/14/03)
2003 Sep 14, In Cancun, Mexico,
the WTO talks collapsed when delegates from Africa, the Caribbean
and Asia walked out accusing wealthy nations of failing to offer
sufficient compromises on agriculture and other issues.
(SFC, 9/15/03, p.A3)(AP, 9/14/08)
2003 Sep 14, A Saudi importer
of some 58,000 Australian sheep was reported to be trying to
give them away for free. The sheep had been stranded for five
weeks on the ship, the Cormo Express, due to a 6% infection rate for
scabby mouth disease. Australia in 2002 had imposed tougher rules on
ships exporting livestock to the Persian Gulf after it was revealed
that 14,500 sheep had died from heat stress in one month. Some 5,700
sheep aboard the Cormo Express died before Eritrea accepted the
animals.
(AP, 9/14/03)(Econ, 12/2/06, p.88)
2003 Sep 14, Dhaher bin Thamer
al-Shimry, a Saudi marijuana trafficker, was beheaded, bringing the
number of beheadings in the kingdom this year to 41.
(AP, 9/14/03)
2003 Sep 14, Pope John Paul II
wrapped up a pilgrimage to Slovakia by beatifying two clerics, Greek
Catholic Bishop Vasil Hopko and Roman Catholic Sister Zdenka
Schelingova, who were jailed and tortured under the former communist
regime.
(AP, 9/14/03)
2003 Sep 14, Sweden voted
56-42% "No" in a referendum on whether to adopt the euro.
(Reuters, 9/15/03)
2003 Sep 15, US professional
women's soccer folded due to low attendance. The WUSA soccer league
shut down operations five days before the Women's World Cup, saying
it didn't have enough money to stay in business for a fourth season.
(WSJ, 9/16/03, p.A1)(AP, 9/15/04)
2003 Sep 15, In California a
judicial panel postponed the Oct 7 recall balloting because old
ballot equipment could deprive voters of their right to be counted.
On Sep 23 the 9th Circuit Court ruled that the recall be held on Oct
7.
(AP, 9/16/03)(SFC, 9/16/03, p.A1)(SFC, 9/20/03,
p.A1)(SFC, 9/24/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 15, A new human rights
report on Brazil said summary executions and killings by death
squads, often formed by police officers, are commonplace and
frequently tolerated by authorities.
(AP, 9/16/03)
2003 Sep 15, The Colombian army
reported that its forces in Operation Scorpion killed at least 17
suspected members of a rebel special forces unit.
(AP, 9/15/03)
2003 Sep 15, In India
rain-swollen rivers began receding in the state of Uttar Pradesh but
the death toll there from monsoon rains rose to 190 after 34 more
people were reported killed.
(AP, 9/15/03)
2003 Sep 15, In Iraq guerrillas
killed a US soldier in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in central
Baghdad.
(AP, 9/15/03)
2003 Sep 15, In Kenya gunmen
burst into the home of a senior delegate to a constitutional
convention and shot him to death.
(AP, 9/15/03)
2003 Sep 15, More than 100
South Korean tourists flew to North Korea's capital on the first
commercial flight between the two countries since they were divided
nearly six decades ago.
(AP, 9/15/03)
2003 Sep 15, In Ingushetia,
Russia, a truck filled with explosives blew up outside a government
security building, killing at least three people and wounding at
least 22.
(AP, 9/15/03)(WSJ, 9/16/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 15, In Saudi Arabia a
fire that swept through el-Haer prison in Riyadh and 94 were
initially reported killed. 67 inmates died in the worst prison fire
in Saudi Arabian history.
(AP, 9/16/03)(AP, 2/16/12)
2003 Sep 15, Over 360 Somali
delegates in Kenya adopted a transitional charter that outlines a
future government for the troubled African nation.
(AP, 9/16/03)
2003 Sep 16, The US vetoed a UN
resolution demanding that Israel not harm or expel Arafat.
(WSJ, 9/17/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 16, North Carolina (D)
Sen. John Edwards (50) entered the US presidential race.
(SFC, 9/17/03, p.A6)
2003 Sep 16, Actor-singer Sheb
Wooley (82) died in Nashville, Tenn.
(AP, 9/16/04)
2003 Sep 16, Mohammed Abdel
Qader and his brother were summoned to a Cairo police station by
Captain Ashraf Safwat. Abdel Qader died five days later and an
autopsy gave torture by electric shock combined with a weak heart as
the cause of death.
(AFP, 2/1/07)
2003 Sep 16, Guinea-Bissau's
army chief of staff who overthrew the West African nation's
president has won an agreement from political leaders to have
presidential powers until new elections are held.
(AP, 9/16/03)
2003 Sep 16, In Indonesia
escalating fighting in resource-rich Aceh province left at least 22
suspected separatist rebels and one Indonesian soldier dead.
(AP, 9/17/03)
2003 Sep 16, Baha Mousa (26),
an Iraqi hotel receptionist, died after being beaten at a British
military camp in Basra. An autopsy said he died of asphyxia, caused
by a stress position that soldiers forced him to maintain. He was
arrested, along with nine other Iraqis, at the Haitham Hotel in
Basra 2 days earlier by members of the 1st Battalion The Queen's
Lancashire Regiment (QLR). In 2006 Corp. Donald Payne pleaded guilty
to a charge of inhumane treatment of Iraqi civilians, but denied
manslaughter. Payne, who became Britain's first convicted war
criminal, was dismissed by the army and jailed for a year over the
killing. In 2008 the British Ministry of Defense agreed to pay just
under $6 million to the family of Mousa and 9 others who suffered
injuries while in the custody of British forces. In 2009 Britain
opened a public inquiry into the case and Britain's military
apologized for its treatment of Mousa. On Sep 8, 2011, an inquiry
concluded that British soldiers beat Mousa to death in an act of
unjustified violence that left a "very great stain" on Britain's
armed forces.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8143982.stm)(Econ, 9/23/06,
p.66)(AP, 7/10/08)(AP, 7/13/09)(AP, 9/21/09)(Reuters, 9/8/11)
2003 Sep 16, Italian consumer
groups asked for a boycott of virtually all products and services to
protest price hikes.
(AP, 9/16/03)
2003 Sep 16, In western Japan a
man reportedly involved in a pay dispute set off an explosion that
killed himself, a hostage and a police officer in an office
building.
(AP, 9/16/03)
2003 Sep 16, It was reported
that scientists in Japan have transformed mouse stem cells into
sperm cells.
(SFC, 9/16/03, p.A6)
2003 Sep 16, The UN turned over
responsibility for security in East Timor's second largest city to
the country's fledgling police force.
(AP, 9/16/03)
2003 Sep 17, Wesley Clark, the
retired general with a four-star military resume but no political
experience, decided to become the 10th Democratic presidential
candidate.
(Reuters, 9/16/03)
2003 Sep 17, Three former
executives of Merrill Lynch & Co. were indicted on fraud charges
related to Enron Corp.
(SFC, 9/18/03, p.B3)
2003 Sep 17, Dick Grasso,
Chairman of the NY Stock Exchange, resigned following a public
outcry over his $139.5 million retirement pay package.
(WSJ, 9/18/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 17, Microsoft Chairman
Bill Gates said his foundation would donate $51 million to create 67
small high schools in NYC. It was part of a larger plan by the city
to create 200 small high schools to replace struggling large ones.
(SFC, 9/18/03, p.A3)
2003 Sep 17, Iran's leading
dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri,
criticized the country's hard-line Islamic leaders, saying they
should submit to elections and allow the country's young people to
choose their future.
(AP, 9/17/03)
2003 Sep 17, An audiotape
purporting to carry the voice of Saddam Hussein, broadcast on Arab
television, called on Iraqis to fight the American occupation.
(AP, 9/17/04)
2003 Sep 17, The imprisoned
leader of a Peruvian rebel group said his group has given up armed
conflict and now wants to become a political movement. Victor Polay,
in a published interview, acknowledged that the Tupac Amaru
Revolutionary Movement has been defeated.
(AP, 9/17/03)
2003 Sep 17, Spain's leading
investigating judge, Baltasar Garzon, issued the first known
indictment against Osama bin Laden in the Sept. 11 attacks.
(AP, 9/17/04)
2003 Sep 17, In Sri Lanka 19
million people shared space with about 3,000 wild elephants. As
forests dwindled the huge beasts entered villages to forage in
garbage dumps for food.
(AP, 9/17/03)
2003 Sep 18, Hurricane Isabel
plowed into North Carolina's Outer Banks with 100 mile-an-hour winds
and pushed its way up the Eastern Seaboard; the storm was later
blamed for 30 deaths.
(AP, 9/18/08)
2003 Sep 18, Anti-virus
companies warned of a new computer worm circulating through e-mail
that purports to be security software from Microsoft Corp.
(Reuters, 9/18/03)
2003 Sep 18, In Afghanistan US
forces killed at least 11 Taliban in fighting over the last 3 days
as part of operation "Mountain Viper," which has been going on for
more than two weeks. US helicopters attacked a tent in southern
Afghanistan, killing two Taliban militants and 10 nomadic tribesmen
after the Taliban sought shelter there. Local Taliban commander,
Mullah Mohammed Gul Niazi, was among the dead.
(AP, 9/18/03)(AP, 9/20/03)
2003 Sep 18, In Afghanistan US
helicopter fire left 5 women and four children dead and six people
wounded in the Nuabahar district.
(AP, 9/25/03)
2003 Sep 18, A law against
"promotion" of homosexuality was removed from the British statute
books, after more than a decade of gay-rights protests.
(AP, 9/18/03)
2003 Sep 18, A human rights
group estimated that 11,000 children are fighting in Colombia's
civil war.
(SFC, 9/19/03, p.A15)
2003 Sep 18, Iraqi guerrillas
ambushed an American patrol in Al Auja, Saddam Hussein's native
village, killing 3 US soldiers. The number of US killed since the
start of war in March reached 297.
(SFC, 9/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 18, Genshin Fujinami
(44), a Japanese Buddhist monk of the Tendai sect, completed a
7-year, 24,800-mile spiritual journey to the Hiei mountains. 46
other marathon monks have completed the journey since 1885. The
ritual, believed to be a path to enlightenment, dates to the 8th
century.
(SFC, 9/20/03, p.A2)
2003 Sep 18, Nepal was shut
down in a 3-day strike imposed by Maoist rebels.
(WSJ, 9/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 18, A Russian military
jet crashed in central Russia during a test flight and four crew
members are missing.
(AP, 9/18/03)
2003 Sep 18, Syria's new prime
minister formed a 31-member Cabinet, touted as a new effort to carry
out economic and bureaucratic reforms.
(AP, 9/18/03)
2003 Sep 18, Zimbabwe's high
court ordered the nation's only independent newspaper reopened.
Police had shut it down because it refused to get a government
license.
(WSJ, 9/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 19, Hurricane Isabel
knocked out power to more than 4.5 million people as it weakened
into a tropical storm and raced toward Canada after swamping tidal
communities along Chesapeake Bay. 21 of 36 storm victims were in
Virginia.
(AP, 9/19/03)(AP, 9/20/03)(WSJ, 9/23/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 19, In Chechnya rebel
attacks and a mine blast have left 7 Russian servicemen dead in the
past 24 hours in the Kremlin's military campaign against Chechen
separatists.
(AP, 9/19/03)
2003 Sep 19, The government of
Georgia scrapped an accord guaranteeing religious freedom for
Catholics. The next day the Vatican issued an unusually strong
rebuke to the former Soviet republic and its dominant Orthodox
Church.
(AP, 9/20/03)
2003 Sep 19, In Iraq former
Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad, Saddam Hussein's last defense minister,
surrendered to an American commander after weeks of negotiations. He
was no. 27 on the most-wanted list.
(AP, 9/19/03)
2003 Sep 19, In the Maldives
unrest erupted at the Maafushi prison after a young man named Evan
Naseem was tortured to death. Police opened fire and 3 people were
killed. Violent riots followed as did a state of emergency.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.54)
2003 Sep 19, Zimbabwe military
police barred journalists from entering their offices, defying a
court order to allow the country's only independent daily newspaper
to resume publishing.
(AP, 9/19/03)
2003 Sep 20, In Atlantic City,
NJ, Miss Florida Ericka Dunlap beat out 50 rivals to be crowned Miss
America.
(AP, 9/21/03)
2003 Sep 20, A Grand Canyon
sightseeing helicopter crashed and all 7 aboard were killed.
(WSJ, 9/23/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 20, In Oakland, Ca.,
Cha Cha Hill (3) died of multiple injuries following numerous
beatings by his father, Chazarus Hill Sr. In 2007 the father (27)
was sentenced to 26 years to life in prison following a conviction
of assault causing death.
(SFC, 3/9/07, p.B4)
2003 Sep 19, Five of six
children riding on an all-terrain vehicle in Coffee County, Ga.,
were killed when they were hit by a motorist.
(AP, 9/21/04)
2003 Sep 20, In central Iraq 3
American soldiers were killed and 13 injured in a mortar attack and
a bombing.
(AP, 9/21/03)
2003 Sep 20, In Iraq gunmen
attacked and wounded Aquila al-Hashimi, one of three women on Iraq's
Governing Council and a leading candidate to become the country's
representative at the United Nations.
(AP, 9/20/03)
2003 Sep 20, Japan's ruling
party entered the final phase of voting to choose its leader. PM
Junichiro Koizumi easily won re-election as head of Japan's ruling
Liberal Democratic Party.
(AP, 9/20/03)
2003 Sep 20, The Indian army
said it killed six suspected separatist guerrillas from a
Pakistan-based group after a fierce battle in Indian-controlled
Kashmir.
(AP, 9/20/03)
2003 Sep 20, Latvians endorsed
membership in the EU.
(AP, 9/21/03)
2003 Sep 20, In central
Pakistan a train slammed into a bus, killing 27 people and injuring
6.
(AP, 9/20/03)
2003 Sep 20, The semi-annual
meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund began in
Dubai, UAR.
(AP, 9/21/03)
2003 Sep 20, Zimbabwe Vice
President Simon Muzenda (81), a long time loyal aide of Zimbabwe's
autocratic leader Robert Mugabe, died.
(AP, 9/20/03)
2003 Sep 21, At the 55th Annual
Emmy Awards "The West Wing" won for best drama.
(SFC, 9/22/03, p.D1)
2003 Sep 21, NYSE board of
directors announced the appointment of John S. Reed (64) as interim
chairman and CEO.
(WSJ, 9/22/03, p.C1)
2003 Sep 21, NASA’s $1.5
billion Galileo mission ended a 14-year exploration of the solar
system's largest planet and its moons with the spacecraft crashing
by design into Jupiter at 108,000 mph.
(SFC, 9/22/03, p.B8)(AP, 9/21/04)
2003 Sep 21, A US DynCorp plane
crashed while fumigating cocaine-producing crops in volatile
northern Colombia, killing the American pilot: "preliminary
information indicates the aircraft was struck by hostile ground
fire." The military contractor said it was the 5th shot down by
rebels.
(AP, 9/22/03)(WSJ, 9/23/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 21, In Bolivia a rural
roadblock near Warista ended in a clash with police and soldiers
that left at least 4 people dead.
(SSFC, 9/28/03, p.C2)
2003 Sep 21, The latest
outbreak of fighting between Hutu rebels and the army in Burundi's
decade-long civil war has killed at least 12 people on the outskirts
of Bujumbura.
(AP, 9/23/03)
2003 Sep 21, Paul Martin was
elected by Canada's Liberal Party to succeed Jean Chretien as prime
minister.
(AP, 9/21/04)
2003 Sep 21, In Germany
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's party suffered a bitter defeat in
state elections that focused on Germany's stagnating economy.
(AP, 9/21/03)
2003 Sep 21, In India's portion
of Kashmir a bomb hidden inside a videocassette recorder exploded in
a busy market, killing 3 people and wounding 28 others.
(AP, 9/21/03)
2003 Sep 21, In Iraq corporate
and personal income taxes were capped at 15%. All foreign government
entities and their employees were declared exempt.
(WSJ, 10/28/03, p.A4)
2003 Sep 21, The leader of the
Maldives appealed for calm after two days of rioting killed 3 people
and sent shock waves through this tiny Indian Ocean island nation.
(AP, 9/21/03)
2003 Sep 22, California signed
into law a privacy bill, effective Jul 1, 2004, that prevents use of
vehicle recorded data without the consent of the owner. GM began
installing data boxes in the 1970s.
(SFC, 9/23/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 22, Actor Gordon Jump
died at age 71.
(AP, 9/22/04)
2003 Sep 22, Hugo Young
(b.1938), British political columnist for the Sunday Times and the
Guardian, died. In 2008 Ion Trewin edited “The Hugo Young Papers:
Thirty Years of British Politics – Off the Record.”
(Econ, 11/29/08, p.86)
2003 Sep 22, In Haiti the
bullet-riddled body of Amiot Metayer (39) was found, more than a
year after he escaped from prison and allegedly went on a rampage
terrorizing government opponents. 3 days of protests followed the
news.
(AP, 9/23/03)(SFC, 9/26/03, p.A3)
2003 Sep 22, A suicide bomber,
his body wrapped in explosives and his car filled with 50 pounds of
TNT, struck a police checkpoint outside UN headquarters in Baghdad,
killing an Iraqi policeman who stopped him and wounding 19 people.
(AP, 9/22/03)
2003 Sep 22, NATO selected
Dutch Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as the alliance's new
secretary general.
(AP, 9/22/03)
2003 Sep 22, The jawbone of a
cave-man living in what is now Romania, found in 2002 in Pestera cu
Oase, was reported as the oldest fossil from an early modern human
to be found in Europe. It was carbon-dated to between 34,000 and
36,000 years ago.
(AP, 9/22/03)
2003 Sep 22, In Uganda a
speeding bus plowed head-on into a truck loaded with relief food
destined for Burundi, killing 46 people and injuring 33 others.
(AP, 9/22/03)
2003 Sep 23, Speaking at the
United Nations, President Bush rejected calls from France and
Germany to hasten the transfer of power in Iraq, insisting the shift
to self-government could be "neither hurried nor delayed."
(AP, 9/23/04)
2003 Sep 23, Puerto Rico's
congressional delegate said the United States will close its
Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in eastern Puerto Rico within the next
six months.
(AP, 9/23/03)
2003 Sep 23, US forces in Iraq
killed 3 civilians in an aerial attack on a farming village.
(SFC, 9/24/03, p.A3)
2003 Sep 23, A federal appeals
court unanimously put California's recall election back on the
calendar for Oct. 11.
(AP, 9/23/04)
2003 Sep 23, In California's
Gov. Gray Davis signed a law to prohibit spam effective Jan 1.
(SFC, 9/24/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 23, Advanced Micro
Devices (AMD) introduced 64-bit computing for PC users. The 1st new
chip is the AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+, which runs at 2 GHz.
(SFC, 9/23/03, p.B1)
2003 Sep 23, Scientists
reported that human bone fragments found in a cave from Aveline's
Hole in the Mendip Hills of southwest England date from
10,200-10,400BCE.
(AP, 9/23/03)
2003 Sep 23, China signed
agreements with Russia and four Central Asian neighbors (Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan) in an effort to strengthen a
7-year-old security alliance and encourage economic links across a
largely undeveloped region.
(AP, 9/23/03)
2003 Sep 23, A power outage
struck the capital of Denmark and southern Sweden, leaving nearly 4
million people without electricity.
(AP, 9/23/03)
2003 Sep 23, Ivory Coast rebel
leaders said they were abandoning their posts in Ivory Coast's
power-sharing government and halting disarmament.
(AP, 9/23/03)
2003 Sep 23, A raid in Saudi
Arabia on Islamic militants left three suspects dead, including
Jubran Sultan al-Qahtani (aka as Zubayr al-Rimi), an al-Qaida figure
wanted by the US.
(AP, 9/24/03)
2003 Sep 24, After four
turbulent months, three special legislative sessions and two
Democratic walkouts, both houses of the Republican-controlled Texas
Legislature adopted redistricting plans favoring the GOP.
(AP, 9/24/04)
2003 Sep 24, In Cold Spring,
Minn., Jason McLaughlin (15), a high school freshman, shot and
killed senior Aaron Rollins (17) and wounded Seth Bartell (14)
before surrendering. Bartell died from his wounds on Oct 10. On
August 30, 2005, McLaughlin was sentenced to life in prison, with no
possibility for parole until he’s well over 50. He was convicted of
first degree murder in the shooting death of Bartell and
second-degree murder for killing Rollins.
(SFC, 10/11/03,
p.A3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocori_High_School_shooting)
2003 Sep 24, Herb Gardner (68),
Tony-winning playwright, died in New York.
(AP, 9/24/04)
2003 Sep 24, In Israel 27
reserve pilots refused to take part in targeted killings.
(WSJ, 9/25/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 24, India rejected
Pakistan's invitation to negotiate a settlement concerning the
disputed province of Kashmir.
(AP, 9/25/03)
2003 Sep 24, Families of people
killed when US jets bombed Libya urged Tripoli to suspend payments
to relatives of the victims of the 1988 downing of a Pan Am airliner
until they receive compensation from the United States.
(AP, 9/24/03)
2003 Sep 24, Swedish police
arrested a new suspect in the murder of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh,
and released a man they had held for more than a week.
(AP, 9/24/03)
2003 Sep 25, In Nashville,
Tenn., 8 people died in a nursing home fire.
(SFC, 9/27/03, p.A3)
2003 Sep 25, In a new French
deck of cards Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gets the honor as
ace of spades. Pres. Bush is the king of diamonds and Osama bin
Laden the joker. Thierry Meyssan, the man behind the French deck,
headed the Voltaire Network, a left-wing association that put the
cards on its Internet site.
(AP, 9/25/03)
2003 Sep 25, Franco Modigliani
(85), Nobel-winning economist, died in Cambridge, Mass.
(AP, 9/25/04)(Econ, 10/4/03, p.74)
2003 Sep 25, George Plimpton
(b.1927), writer and participatory journalist, died in NYC at age
76. He helped found the Paris Review in 1953. His books included
"Paper Lion" (1966).
(SFC, 9/27/03, p.A2)
2003 Sep 25, Edward Said (67),
Palestinian American journalist, critic and author, died. His books
included "Orientalism" and "Culture and Imperialism."
(SSFC, 12/28/03, p.E9)(Econ, 10/4/03, p.84)
2003 Sep 25, In France INSERM,
the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, determined
that 14,802 people had died in August due to the heat wave.
(AP, 9/25/03)
2003 Sep 25, A mortar blast
tore through a market in Baqouba, Iraq, killing nine civilians and
injuring more than a dozen others. Townspeople suspected American
soldiers stationed nearby may have been the target. Aquila
al-Hashimi (50), the first member of Iraq's American-picked
Governing Council to be targeted for assassination, died, five days
after she was shot in an ambush.
(AP, 9/26/03)(AP, 9/25/03)(WSJ, 9/26/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 25, Israeli troops
killed 4 Islamic militants, including a senior fugitive, in gun
battles in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. One soldier was killed and
six were wounded in the fighting.
(AP, 9/25/03)
2003 Sep 25, In northern Japan
an 8.3 earthquake, the world's most powerful in 2 1/2 years, injured
at least 589 people and knocked out power on Hokkaido.
(http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2003/eq_030925/)
2003 Sep 25, In Nigeria an
Islamic appeals court overturned the conviction of Amina Lawal. She
had been sentenced to death by stoning for committing adultery.
(AP, 9/25/03)
2003 Sep 25, Yuri Senkevich
(66), a documentary filmmaker and host of Russia's longest running
TV show, died.
(AP, 9/25/03)
2003 Sep 25, Sudan's government
and main rebel group signed an agreement on security arrangements
for a six-year political transition in efforts to end their 20-year
civil war.
(AP, 9/26/03)
2003 Sep 26, President Bush and
Russian President Vladimir Putin opened a two-day summit at Camp
David.
(AP, 9/26/04)
2003 Sep 26, The US government
issued a recall for Segway scooters, citing instances in which
riders fell off when the batteries ran low.
(AP, 9/26/04)
2003 Sep 26, US troops fired on
two cars at a checkpoint in Fallujah, killing four Iraqis and
injuring five others. Over 4 days Sheikh Mishkhen al Jumaili lost 9
relatives including his son.
(AP, 9/27/03)(SFC, 10/6/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 26, Burkina Faso
President Blaise Compaore demanded the elimination of U.S. export
subsidies on cotton.
(AP, 9/27/03)
2003 Sep 26, In Cuba Brazil's
Pres. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed business accords with Castro
that included an agreement to renegotiate Havana's $40 million debt
with Brazil.
(AP, 9/27/03)
2003 Sep 26, Robert Palmer
(54), a rock singer known for his sharp suits and hits including
"Addicted to Love," died in Paris of a heart attack.
(AP, 9/26/03)
2003 Sep 26, German authorities
reported that they have broken up 38 child-pornography rings with
links to tens of thousands of suspects around the world, including
the US.
(AP, 9/27/03)
2003 Sep 26, A Palestinian
gunman killed 2 people including a baby girl in an Israeli
settlement outside Hebron.
(SFC, 9/27/03, p.A8)
2003 Sep 26, In Ivory Coast
gunmen broke into a bank and sparked a night-long street battle that
left over 20 people dead. French troops rushed in the next day to
try to impose order.
(AP, 9/27/03)
2003 Sep 26, Nawabzada
Nasrullah Khan (85), head of Pakistan's main opposition alliance and
one of its greatest democracy advocates, died.
(AP, 9/27/03)
2003 Sep 26, In Singapore
Vignes Mourthi (23), found guilty of drug trafficking last year
after his arrest in September 2001 for smuggling 27 grams (0.98
ounces) of heroin and Moorthi Angappan, convicted of helping him,
were hanged. Over the past four years, 88 people have been hanged,
mostly for drug offenses. The government says the death penalty
effectively deters drug addiction.
(AP, 9/26/03)
2003 Sep 27, President Bush and
Russian President Vladimir Putin urged Iran and North Korea to
abandon suspected nuclear weapons programs, but disagreed over how
to deal with both countries; Putin also declined at the end of a
two-day summit at Camp David to pledge any postwar help for Iraq.
(AP, 9/27/04)
2003 Sep 27, Donald O'Connor
(78), film star and composer, died in Calabasas, Calif. His films
included "Singing in the Rain" (1952).
(SSFC, 9/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 27, The Algerian army
reported that it had killed 150 armed Islamic militants in a
two-week operation in the eastern foothills of this north African
country.
(AP, 9/27/03)
2003 Sep 27, Brazil and Cuba
signed $200 million in new business deals in Cuba by private
Brazilian enterprises.
(AP, 9/27/03)
2003 Sep 27, Europe's first
mission to the moon blasted off aboard a European Ariane rocket from
French Guiana. The SMART-1 probe made it to within 3,100 miles of
the moon on Nov 15, 2004, and proceeded to move into an elliptical
orbit. The spacecraft ended its mission Sep 3, 2006, when it crashed
into the lunar surface.
(AP, 9/28/03)(SFC, 11/17/04, p.A3)(SSFC, 9/3/06,
p.A5)
2003 Sep 27, In western Iran a
bus plunged from a mountain road into a river, killing 21 passengers
and injuring 11.
(AP, 9/28/03)
2003 Sep 27, A Palestinian
militant was killed when a bomb he was making blew up on as Israel
maintained a high alert over a New Year holiday weekend.
(Reuters, 9/27/03)
2003 Sep 27, A Russian rocket
brought two Russian and four foreign satellites, including Nigeria's
first, into orbit. Nigeria's $13 million craft, to be used for
taking photos, was built by a British firm.
(AP, 9/27/03)(Econ, 9/13/03, p.42)
2003 Sep 27, In northeast
Uganda rebels of the LRA fighting a 17-year insurgency raided a
village, killing at least 22 people.
(AP, 9/28/03)
2003 Sep 28, In Linden, Texas
Billy Ray Johnson (42) was lured to an all-white party where
underage drinkers fed him alcohol and picked on him. In 2007 a jury
awarded $9 million to Johnson, a mentally disabled black man who
suffered permanent brain damage after being beaten and dumped in a
field by 4 white men.
(AP, 4/22/07)
2003 Sep 28, Althea Gibson
(76), Wimbledon's 1st black tennis champion (1957), died in New
Jersey.
(WSJ, 9/29/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 28, Elia Kazan
(b.1909), Anatolian-Greek-born writer, film and stage director,
died. His films included "On the Waterfront" (1954) and "A Streetcar
Named Desire" (1951). In 2005 Richard Schickel authored “Elia Kazan:
A Biography.”
(AP, 9/29/03)(SSFC, 12/4/05, p.M6)
2003 Sep 28, In Colombia a
remote-controlled bomb on a motorcycle exploded as revelers left a
disco in a Florencia, killing at least 13 people and wounding 48
others.
(AP, 9/29/04)
2003 Sep 28, Cuba's foreign
minister made an impassioned appeal for the lifting of the trade
embargo against his country, saying the blockade has cost the
Caribbean nation $72 billion in the last 42 years.
(AP, 9/28/03)
2003 Sep 28, In Guinea-Bissau
senior army officers, who staged a recent coup, installed
Henrique Rosa as civilian president and Artur Sanha as prime
minister to govern the West African country until elections. Civil
servants hadn't been paid in nearly a year and teachers hadn't been
paid in two. Soldiers were getting bags of rice instead of
paychecks.
(AP, 9/29/03)(AP, 10/6/03)
2003 Sep 28, A nationwide power
blackout in Italy hit virtually the whole population in the dead of
night. Power was out for as much as 18 hours. Problems began after a
tree branch hit power lines in Switzerland.
(AP, 9/28/03)(WSJ, 10/1/03, p.A1)(AP, 10/1/03)
2003 Sep 28, Israeli and
Palestinian fatalities over the last 3 years totaled some 3,277 with
860 on the Israeli side and 2,417 Palestinian dead. An additional 60
Palestinians were killed by militants for informing to Israel.
(SSFC, 9/28/03, p.A14)
2003 Sep 28, Pope John Paul II
named 31 new cardinals.
(AP, 9/29/03)
2003 Sep 29, President Bush
signed legislation to ratify the Federal Trade Commission's
authority to set up a national do-not-call list for telemarketers.
(AP, 9/29/04)
2003 Sep 29, US The Justice
Department launched a full-blown criminal investigation into who
leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of
ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson, and President Bush the next day
directed his White House staff to cooperate fully. The White House
denied that President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, had
leaked a CIA agent's identity to retaliate against an opponent of
the administration's Iraq policy. [see Jul 14, 2003, Jun 30, 2005]
(WSJ, 10/1/03, p.A1)(SFC, 10/4/03, p.A3)(AP,
9/29/04)(SFC, 7/2/05, p.A8)
2003 Sep 29, Dennis Kozlowski,
CEO of Tyco Int'l., and financial chief Mark Swartz went on trial on
charges that they stole over $600 million from their Bermuda-based
conglomerate.
(WSJ, 2/4/04, p.C2)
2003 Sep 29, Irshad Manji (34),
Canadian author of the recently published: "The Trouble With Islam:
A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith," was reported saying: "I
leave my fellow Muslims with a very basic question here: Will we
remain spiritually adolescent, caving to cultural pressures to
conform or will we finally mature to the full fledged citizens that
we are allowed to be in this part of the world?"
(AP, 9/29/03)(WSJ, 1/27/04, p.D8)
2003 Sep 29, India's army said
that it killed 15 Islamic militants as they tried overnight to sneak
into Indian-controlled Kashmir from Pakistan-controlled territory.
(AP, 9/29/03)
2003 Sep 29, In Japan a
23-month-old bull tested positive for new strain of mad cow disease.
A quarantined of 604 cows followed to prevent the spread of
the disease.
(AP, 10/8/03)
2003 Sep 29, In Malaysia PM
Mahathir Mohamad presided at the inauguration of the Berjaya Times
Square, a $460 million project that was derailed by the 1997-98
Asian financial crises.
(AP, 9/29/03)
2003 Sep 29, Rwandans began
casting ballots at the start of three days of voting in the nation's
first genuine multiparty legislative elections since independence
from Belgium in 1962.
(AP, 9/29/03)
2003 Sep 29, Vietnam refused to
recognize Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man, Pope John
Paul II's new appointment, as the new cardinal for Ho Chi Minh City.
(AP, 9/29/03)
2003 Sep 30, The FBI began a
full-scale criminal investigation into whether White House officials
had illegally leaked the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie
Plame.
(AP, 9/30/08)
2003 Sep 30, Ford planned to
cut some 12,000 jobs world-wide. Chrysler planned to eliminate
several thousand positions.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R12)
2003 Sep 30, In Oakland, Ca.,
Yusuf Bey, founder Your Black Muslim Bakery, died of colon cancer.
He was awaiting trial on charges of raping a minor. In 2002 he was
charged with 27 counts in the alleged rapes of 4 girls under the age
of 14. In 2007 three of his former wives testified that Bey had
directed many of the 100 women, whom he considered his wives, to
make fraudulent applications for government aid programs.
(SFC, 11/30/05, p.A16)(SSFC, 11/18/07, p.A1)
2003 Sep 30, Eighteen
accused al-Qaida sympathizers were convicted in Belgium's biggest
terrorism trial. Nizar Trabelsi of Tunisia, who once played
professional soccer in Germany, received the maximum sentence of 10
years in prison from a court that also convicted 17 other men and
acquitted five others.
(AP, 9/30/03)(AP, 9/30/08)
2003 Sep 30, In Colombia
assassins riding a motorbike killed Jose Castillo, a candidate for
mayor in Soledad, marking the 15th candidate killed as elections
approach.
(AP, 9/30/03)
2003 Sep 30, Mauritius PM
Anerood Jugnauth resigned and was replaced by his deputy, Paul
Berenger. Jugnauth took up the ceremonial roll of president a few
days later.
(Econ, 9/27/03, p.46)
2003 Sep 30, Nigeria lifted its
fuel price cap on petrol, diesel and kerosene throwing the market
open to competition and chaos ensued.
(Econ, 10/18/03, p.46)
2003 Sep 30, Norway's national
film board lifted a ban on hundreds of films that were deemed too
sexually explicit or violent, including 1994's "On Deadly Ground"
starring Steven Seagal and the 1990 gangster epic "Miller's
Crossing."
(AP, 10/1/03)
2003 Sep 30, A Serbian police
officer went on a shooting spree, killing four of his colleagues and
seriously wounding three others.
(AP, 9/30/03)
2003 Sep, Carlo Benetton sold
his 11,000 acre Buffalo Ranch to the state of Texas for use by the
prison system.
(Econ, 9/27/03, p.30)
2003 Sep, Pres. Jammeh Yahya
named Maimuma Taal-Ndure (34) as director general of Gambia’s Civil
Aviation Authority (CAA).
(WSJ, 12/24/07, p.A8)
2003 Sep, In Hungary Tibor
Rejto, CEO of K&H Bank, was arrested as part of an alleged
$40-50 million fraud scandal centered around stockbroker Attila
Kulscar.
(Econ, 9/27/03, p.78)
2003 Sep, A 3-foot-tall adult
female skeleton was found in a cave believed to be 18,000 years old.
A trove of fragmented bones accounted for as many as seven primitive
individuals that lived on the equatorial island of Flores, located
east of Java and northwest of Australia. Scientists have named the
extinct species Homo floresiensis. Scientists in 2005 said the group
emerged some 95,000 years earlier and went extinct about 12,000
years ago. In 2009 new studies suggested the people, dubbed hobbits,
were a previously unknown species altogether.
(AP, 10/27/04)(SFC, 10/28/04, p.A1)(SFC, 3/4/05,
p.A2)(AP, 5/7/09)
2003 Sep-2004 Apr, In 2005 it
was reported that members of the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division
beat and abused prisoners at Camp Mercury, an operating base near
Fallujah. “We kept it to broken arms and legs.”
(SFC, 9/24/05, p.A3)
Go to October
2003
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