Timeline of 2003 August
Return to home
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 Yihya
Farkhan and a 16-year-old girlfriend lured Dana Bennett (18) into their
vehicle. Farkhan 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 Farkhan. He was already in
custody on suspicion of raping an Australian tourist when a tip led
homicide detectives to him.
(www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3721705,00.html)
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 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.
(SFC, 8/13/03, p.A5)
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.”
(SFC, 8/20/03, p.A12)(AP, 8/21/03)(SSFC, 2/10/08,
p.M1)
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 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)
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.
(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.A8)(AP, 7/11/07)(SFC, 9/4/08, p.A7)
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, founded in
Amsterdam as Kazaa in 2001, released the 1st version of its software
which allowed people to make free voice and video calls over the
internet.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.79)
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, 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)
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