March 2004

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   Liberal sponsorship scandal

March 31, 2004

• Four U.S. civilian contractors are killed in a grenade attack by Iraqi guerrillas in Fallujah, Iraq. A violent mob then pulls the bodies from the burning vehicles, desecrate them, and hang the remains from a bridge over the Euphrates. In a separate incident, five U.S soldiers are killed in a large roadside bomb attack 12 miles (20 km) northwest of Fallujah. (CNN) (BBC)
• The Korea Train Express high-speed rail line opens, connecting Seoul to Busan and Mokpo. (CNN)
• The Guardian newspaper quotes British security service sources as believing that yesterday's raids may have stopped a major terrorist bombing. The sources state that MI5 and MI6 worked with police during the investigation leading to the raids. (Guardian)
• The International Court of Justice rules that the USA violated the rights of 51 Mexican citizens on death row for murder and orders a review of their cases. (AP) (BBC)
• The controversial Higher Education Bill, which will introduce variable tuition fees in England and Wales, passes its third reading in the House of Commons by 316 votes to 288, despite many MPs still vocally opposed. The Bill's second reading in January was passed with a majority of only 5 votes. (BBC) (Guardian) (Reuters)
• Politics of Austria: [[J�rg Haider]], a leading figure in the Freedom Party who is widely viewed as neo-fascist, is re-elected governor of the state of Carinthia. (Scotsman) (Die Presse)
• A Canadian court rules that the Canadian Recording Industry Association did not prove that the downloading of music from the Internet is a copyright violation. The ruling is in line with a decision from the Copyright Board of Canada that downloading music is legal. (Toronto Star) (Bell Globemedia)
• Air America Radio, a self-styled liberal alternative to conservative talk shows on the radio, is launched on six stations from New York City to Los Angeles. (Kansas City Star)
• East African artifacts support evolution of symbolic thinking in Middle Stone Age. (National Geographic Society via EurekAlert)

March 30, 2004

• A suicide bomber sets off a small explosion inside the Bolivian Congress. The bomber � a miner, protesting unpaid pensions � and the chief congressional security guard are killed; several bystanders are wounded. (BBC) (USA Today)
• French President Jacques Chirac retains his prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, but asks Raffarin to reform the country's government. (Washington Post)
• New Jersey physicist Greg Olsen pays $20 million to conduct environmental research for eight days aboard the International Space Station. (Miami Herald)
• Internet search engine Google introduces a new set of tools for more in-depth searching. (CRN)
• Police in Uzbekistan raid a militant's hideout south of the capital, Tashkent. Fighting has caused 23 deaths in the area. (Reuters)
• The Philippines prevents a "Madrid-level attack" after arresting four members of the Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf group. (SFGate)
• The White House allows Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security advisor, to publicly testify under oath on the investigation into the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. (XINHUA) (CNN)
• Eight men are arrested after a series of raids in the UK under the Terrorism Act 2000. Half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser was found during the raids. (Guardian)
• SCO v. IBM: IBM has applied for a declaratory judgment that it does not infringe the SCO Group's copyrights. (Groklaw) (ZDNET)

March 29, 2004

• Foreign relations of Taiwan: Dominica switches diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China. (Channel News Asia).
• ROC presidential election, 2004: The Pan-Blue Coalition drops its demand for another round of voting by members of the military and the police who were put on a hightened state of alert on election day. Chen Shui-bian and Annette Lu sign letters promising not to contest the Pan-Blue petition for a recount.(Miami Herald)(Bloomberg)
• Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin has a close encounter with a UFO. Most likely the UFO was actually a fireball. (Canadian Press) (Calgary Herald)
• An explosion occurs close to the main bazaar in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, killing two and injuring around twenty; preliminary reports point to two female suicide bombers. Also in the capital, three police officers are shot dead; and, in the city of Bukhara, another explosion at a suspected terrorist bomb factory claims ten fatalities. (Reuters) (BBC)
• The Republic of Ireland becomes the first country to ban tobacco smoking in all enclosed workplaces (including bars and restaurants); infringers risk a �3,000 (US$3,600) fine. (BBC)
• NATO welcomes seven new members, as Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia formally became members by depositing their instruments of accession with the United States' government, though the countries will join officially next month at a NATO meeting. All but Slovenia were formerly members of the Warsaw Pact. (BBC) (NATO)
• Nanoparticles allegedly cause brain damage in fish, according to a study of the toxicity of synthetic carbon molecules called "buckyballs". (NewScientist)
• Beauty firm Dove is to use "real women" in advertising after a survey finds two-thirds of UK women feel depressed about their figures and have low body confidence as a result of beauty advertising. (Ananova)
• Scientists discover methane in the Martian atmosphere and state it could mean there is life on the Red Planet. (Space.com)
• Spain is reported to be considering doubling her number of troops stationed in Afghanistan. (BBC) (CNN)

March 28, 2004

• Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, leader of Hamas, states that God has declared war on the United States. (NYTimes) (abs-cbnNEWS) (Reuters) (INDOlink)
• Cambridge University wins a controversial victory in the 150th Boat Race by 6 lengths, with a total time of 18:47 minutes. (BBC)
• The Arab League summit is postponed. The meeting was put off indefinitely because of differences of opinion regarding ways to encourage reform in the region, including democratization. (VOA) (BBC)
• UK Home Secretary David Blunkett prepares to publish a white paper on organized crime that will unveil new details of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the proposed "British FBI". (Ananova)
• Israeli State Attorney Edna Arbel recommends that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon be indicted for taking bribes. (AP)
• The French regional elections result in massive losses for the governing conservative parties and victories for socialist-green alliances in at least 20 of 22 regions. (BBC) (Spiegel) (Yahoo France)
• A coup attempt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo fails. (BBC)
• The skeletal remains of Cecilia Zhang are found in a Toronto ravine after her high-publicity kidnapping. (Toronto Star)

March 27, 2004

• John F. Kerry joins other Democrats calling for National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify before the September 11 commission and states the White House should learn from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's openness during an inquiry after Pearl Harbor. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
• ROC presidential election, 2004: 500,000 Pan-Blue protesters take to the streets in Taipei to demand a recount. (Reuters)
• NASA succeeds in a second attempt to fly its X-43A experimental airplane from the Hyper-X project, attaining speeds in excess of Mach 7, the fastest ever air-breathing hypersonic flight. (CNN)
• In Brussels, European Union Leaders express a sense of unity in the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings, and state that there is a new impetus to reaching a deal on the Union's draft constitution. (IHT)
• A powerful cyclone hits the coast of southern Brazil. Brazilian and U.S. meteorologists disagree over whether Cyclone Catarina is a hurricane, the first ever recorded in the South Atlantic. (AP)

March 26, 2004

• The United States Congress prepares legislation against peer-to-peer technology on multiple fronts. (Wired News)
• United Nations electoral experts and security support arrive in Baghdad. (UN News Center)
• The first South Atlantic hurricane ever recorded forms 275 miles off the coast of Brazil. (Miami Herald)
• Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, says that Islam is authoritarian, inflexible and under-achieving; and that Muslim countries have contributed little of major significance to the world's culture for centuries, at the same time stating that most Muslims are peace loving people who should not be demonized. He, however, denounces moderates for not unequivocally denouncing the "evil" of suicide bombers. Critics said his critique of Islamic culture amounted to an "attack". (Daily Telegraph)
• ROC presidential election, 2004: The controversial victory of Chen Shui-bian is confirmed by the state electoral commission, with a margin of only 29,518 votes � 0.2% of the total � separating the candidates. Pan-Blue protestors storm and hurl eggs at the Central Electoral Commission building. (BBC)
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The United States vetoes a United Nations Security Council resolution (sponsored by Algeria and Libya) condemning the killing by Israel of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin along with six other Palestinians outside a mosque in Gaza City and calling for a complete cessation of executions. The veto is publicly motivated by the resolution making no mention of suicide bombings committed by Hamas and attributed to Yassin. 11 votes are recorded in favour, with three (United Kingdom, Germany, and Romania) abstaining and one (the United States) against. (BBC) (KC Star)

March 25, 2004

• The 2004 Abel Prize in mathematics is announced to be awarded to Michael F. Atiyah and Isadore M. Singer for their index theorem. (Aftenposten)
• The terrorist group AZF suspends its bombing campaign in France but continues to demand money from the government. News agencies report that the government placed notices in [[Lib�ration]] newspaper to contact the terrorists. (BBC)
• The House of Representatives of US state of Georgia passes a ban on genital piercings for women, including consenting adults, as part of a bill to ban female genital mutilation as performed by some Muslim populations, among others. The ban does not apply to men. The provision is not included in the version passed by Georgia's Senate. (AP)
• Novelist and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet is elected to the [[Acad�mie fran�aise]]. (Acad�mie fran�aise)
• Five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) array across the evening sky in a night show that won't be back for another three decades. (AP)
• A prototype of a mechanized five-ton disaster-rescue robot, the T-52 Enryu, is unveiled in Japan. (AFP)

March 24, 2004

• The World Trade Organization makes a preliminary ruling that United States laws prohibiting Internet gambling violate international trade agreements, in response to a complaint by Antigua and Barbuda. The Bush administration vows to appeal, while some members of the United States Congress say they would rather allow a trade war or withdraw from future WTO talks than repeal laws against online gambling. (BBC) (Seattle PI)
• Danish artist Marco Evaristti paints an iceberg in Greenland red, using 780 gallons of paint. (USA Today)
• A bomb is discovered on a TGV railway between Paris and Geneva near Troyes, France. (ONE News)
• Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow: The United States Supreme Court hears oral arguments over the constitutionality of the "under God" clause of the Pledge of Allegiance. (WTHR) (CNN)
• The British explorer David Hempleman-Adams sets an altitude record for a flight in a wicker basket balloon. (Bloomberg)
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
  • The leader of Hamas states that the group has no plans to attack US targets, retreating from earlier threats by its armed wing. However, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is announced as a new target, instead. (News Limited)
  • Sharon states that Israel has a "natural right" to pursue those who would destroy it. (Jewish Press)
  • Hussam Abdo, a 14-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber fails to detonate his bomb-vest at an Israeli checkpoint outside Nablus. The child was paid $23 and promised sex in heaven as his reward. An armed wing of Fatah takes responsibility for sending the boy. (HaAretz)

March 23, 2004

• Unrest in Kosovo: an UNMIK police patrol is attacked on the road Pristina-Podujevo. A UN police officer from Ghana is killed, a local police officer later dies of his wounds, and their translator is also wounded but in stable condition. (Kosovo.net)
• United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell defend their pre-September 11th actions, saying that even if Osama Bin Laden had been killed, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon would have still occured. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen also testify before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. (AP via SFGate)
• Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi is chosen to lead Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and the movement's exiled politburo chief Khaled Meshaal is chosen as its overall leader. (BBC) (Washington Post)

March 22, 2004

• Testimony begins in the state murder trial of convicted Oklahoma City bombing accomplice, Terry Nichols, in McAlester, Oklahoma. (AP on Yahoo!)
• ROC presidential election, 2004: Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party submits a bill to the Legislative Yuan to allow an immediate recount, per Lien Chan's demand, but the majority Pan-Blue Coalition dismisses it as unnecessary saying the President could just issue an executive order instead. (The Star) (Bloomberg)
• Microsoft is to be fined a record �497 million ($613 million) by the European Commission as punishment for abusing its Windows monopoly, according to reports ahead of a key meeting by EU Commissioners on Wednesday. (Financial Times)
• Salvadoran presidential election: Tony Saca of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) declares victory over a former [[Farabundo Mart� National Liberation Front|Communist Party]] guerrilla leader, with 60% of the votes. (Seattle Times) (CoLatino) (El Salvador)
• Israel assassinates Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual head of Hamas, in the Gaza Strip. It then seals off both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. (Reuters) (BBC) Kofi Annan, and the British, French, and German governments, amongst others, condemn the killing. (BBC) (FOX)
• The former chief counter-terrorism aide to U.S. President Bush, Richard Clarke, claims that Bush diverted attention towards Iraq, ignoring the main threat of Al-Qaeda. Clarke was the administration's senior counter-terrorism official when 9/11 took place. (Guardian) (Reuters) (FT) (BBC)
• The United Kingdom shuts its embassy in Algiers, Algeria, amid general security fears. (BBC) (CNN)
• Mijailo Mijailovic is sentenced to life imprisonment for the equivalent of First-degree murder, found guilty of assassination of Sweden's Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, September 10, 2003.
• Same-sex marriage in the U.S.: Benton County, Oregon commissioners, after receiving a letter from state attorney general Hardy Myers, reverse their earlier vote to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples this Wednesday. But, stating they will observe the principal of equal treatment under the law, the commissioners decide that the county will stop issuing any marriage licenses until the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled on the constitutionality of the law. (Oregonian) (Register-Guard)

March 21, 2004

• Jimmy Carter, former US president and 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner, vehemently condemns George W. Bush and Tony Blair for waging an unecessary war "based upon lies and misinterpretations" in order to oust Saddam Hussein. He claims that Blair had allowed his better judgement to be swayed by Bush's desire to finish a war that his father had started. (Independent)
• Malaysian general election: Secular ruling coalition Barisan Nasional wins a two-thirds majority and wrests back the state of Terengganu from Islamist party PAS. A recount is pending for the closely contested state of Kelantan. (Malaysiakini)
• The second race of the 2004 Formula One championship, in Malaysia, is won by Michael Schumacher. (BBC)
• Measurements taken at Mauna Loa Observatory show carbon dioxide readings of 379 parts per million, up by 3 ppm in one year; average increase for the past decade has been 1.8 ppm. The reason for this accelerated buildup in a greenhouse gas requires further analysis. (AP)
• Al-Qaeda claims to have purchased "smart briefcase bombs" with nuclear capabilities on the black market. (AP)
• Salvadoran presidential election: Voting takes place to elect a new president of El Salvador. (BBC)
• ROC presidential election: Taiwan's High Court has ordered all ballot boxes to be sealed, in order to preserve evidence. However, a recount of votes was not ordered. Various protests are held throughout the island. (AP)
• Malaysian general election: Voting gets underway all over Malaysia to decide the new holders of seats in Parliament and various state assemblies.

March 20, 2004

• ROC presidential election: Chen Shui-bian is declared the winner over Lien Chan by fewer than 30,000 votes of nearly 13,000,000 cast (0.25%). Lien calls the result unfair and demands it be voided. A controversial referendum is invalidated by low turnout. (BBC) (CNN)
• Former Queen Juliana of the Netherlands dies aged 94. (BBC) (Royal Household)
• On the first anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, hundreds of thousands join protests in cities across the world to demonstrate against the war and the continued occupation. In London two Greenpeace protesters evade newly-tightened security and scale the Houses of Parliament's Clock Tower to unfurl a banner calling for the truth to be told by the UK government. (BBC) (CNN)
• The BBC announces that actor Christopher Eccleston is to play Doctor Who when the show makes its eagerly-awaited return to television in 2005. (BBC)
• Stephen Harper is elected as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, winning 56% of the possible points on the first ballot. (Global TV) (CBC) (Globe and Mail)
• A Methodist church jury in Bothell, Washington acquits a lesbian minister of violation of church rules. (AP)

March 19, 2004

• ICANN announces that a Toronto, Canada organization, the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR), has applied to sponsor the .xxx top-level domain. IFFOR claims that a special domain would help control the spread of pornography to children. However, in February the Internet Engineering Task Force released RFC 3675, ".sex Considered Dangerous", detailing technical and administrative concerns with such proposals. (Web Host Industry Review) (IETF announcement) (.xxx application)
• Pakistani soldiers seal off an area of South Waziristan where they suspect that the senior al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is hiding. The Pakistanis have suffered many casualties.(CNN)
• The U.S. military drops all charges of alleged mishandling of classified information against Muslim Army chaplain Yousef Yee at Guantanamo Bay.(FOX)
• Same-sex marriage in Canada: The Quebec Court of Appeal upholds a Quebec superior court ruling that same-sex marriages are valid under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (CBC) It joins Ontario and British Columbia in permitting same-sex marriage. The couple which brought the suit is scheduled to be wed on April 10, after a required 20-day waiting period.
• Taiwan presidential election and referendum:
  • The People's Republic of China announces joint military exercises with France close to Taiwan, to coincide with the elections.(BBC)
  • President Chen Shui-bian and Vice-President Annette Lu are shot while campaigning in Tainan. A bullet hits Lu in the knee, before striking Chen in the stomach. The pair were travelling in the presidential motorcade. Both have left hospital after treatment. (Wash. Post) (ChannelNewsAsia) (BBC)
• [[��nekoski bus disaster]]: At least 24 young people are killed and 15 injured, several of them seriously, in a collision on a icy road between a coach and a lorry carrying rolls of paper on Highway 4 near [[��nekoski]] in Central Finland. The accident happened at around 2 a.m. local time (UTC +2). (Helsingin Sanomat) (BBC)
• The newspaper USA Today admits that a former reporter, Jack Kelley, invented or distorted important parts of at least eight major stories. He was, for example, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 on the basis of an eyewitness account of a suicide bombing that, the publication now acknowledges, could not have happened as described. (USA Today)

March 18, 2004

• Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf reports that his soldiers have surrounded a cadre of Al-Qaida men located in Waziristan, Pakistan that was protecting Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command for the organization.
• Howard Dean announces plans to form Democracy for America, a political organization intended to help progressive candidates holding similar views. (CNN)
• Indian government officials warn that rebels from northeast India based in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan are planning major attacks to disrupt upcoming national elections. (Reuters)
• Unrest in Kosovo: NATO announces that it will reinforce its Kosovo peacekeeping force, following ethnic unrest there that has killed at least 31 people over the past two days. More Serbian Orthodox Churches have been set ablaze by Albanians and violence has continued in and around Kosovo Serb enclaves. Russia and Serbia-Montenegro call for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council. United Nations officials attempt to restore order in the province and blame the unrest on nationalist extremists on both sides. More demonstrations have taken place across Serbia, so far without the violence seen the previous day. (Washington Post) (BBC) (B92)
• Near-Earth asteroid 2004 FH is making the closest approach of an asteroid ever recorded. At 22:08 UTC it will pass 43,000 km above Earth's surface. (NASA-JPL)
• Cleanup work at Love Canal has been completed, federal officials said. The EPA says it should be taken off the Superfund list. Environmental activist Lois Gibbs said the Bush administration was seeking to deflect criticism from a March 11 Senate vote against reauthorizing an expired user fee on corporations to fund environmental cleanup. (NYT)
• US Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia refuses to recuse himself from a case - involving his friend Dick Cheney - considering whether the White House must release information about private meetings of Cheney's energy task force stating that duck hunting and fishing trip "was not an intimate setting" and that the energy case was never discussed. (SC)
• The United States House of Representatives votes unanimously to double the reward for Osama bin Laden's capture to US$50 million. (CNN)

March 17, 2004

• ROC presidential election, 2004: Nobel laureate Lee Yuan-tseh endorses Chen Shui-bian for the second time. (Seattle PI)
• Unrest in Kosovo: After two Albanian children are found drowned in the Ibar river in Kosovo and Metohia, with a third still missing, riots erupt in the town of Kosovska Mitrovica and later spread to the entire province. Mitrovica Serbs are blamed by Albanian media for forcing the children into the river, but this is later denied by United Nations officials. At least 22 people are killed by the end of the day with hundreds injured in clashes between Serbs and Albanians; enclaves of Kosovo Serbs elsewhere in the province experience attacks by Kosovo Albanians as well as offices of UN officials which were abandoned. In reaction to the violence in Kosovo, demonstrators in Serbia march in Belgrade and set ablaze mosques in Belgrade and Nish. (B92) (B92) (SwissInfo) (NYT) (BBC) (CNN) (B92) (RTS, in Serbian)
• Occupation of Iraq: A car bomb flattens the Mount Lebanon Hotel in central Baghdad at 20:10 (UTC+3), killing at least 17 people and injuring 45 more. (BBC) (CNN)
• Utah bans execution by firing squad. (BBC)
• Ohio highway sniper attacks: Suspect Charles A. McCoy Jr. is arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada. (MSNBC)

March 16, 2004

• Rwandan President Paul Kagame accuses France of direct involvement in the 1994 genocide. (BBC)
• March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks: Spanish police identify six Moroccans suspected to have carried out the Madrid attacks. Five of the suspects are still at large but one is in custody. (BBC) (Washington Post)
• George W. Bush calls on his Iraq War allies to stick with the United States. (Reuters)
• An explosion at an apartment building in Arkhangelsk, Russia, kills 32. (Al-Jazeera)
• The Federal Reserve votes to keep interest rates unchanged, primarily since new hiring has continued to lag in the United States. (Forbes)

March 15, 2004

• Four U.S. Baptist missionaries working on a water purification project are killed in a drive-by shooting in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. (CNN)
• The city of Aliso Viejo, California, nearly bans foam cups when they learn they are produced from a substance known as Dihydrogen monoxide (water), a substance that could "threaten human health and safety." (MSNBC)
• Pavlo Lazarenko, former prime minister of Ukraine, stands trial in a U.S. federal court in San Francisco for money laundering. (AP)
• Same-sex marriage in the United States: Commissioners of Multnomah County, Oregon dismiss state attorney general Hardy Myers' non-binding opinion that same-sex marriages are illegal and vow to continue issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. (Seattle Times)
• Newly elected Spanish Prime Minister [[Jos� Luis Rodr�guez Zapatero]] announces his government's opposition to the invasion and continued occupation of Iraq and his intention to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq by June 30, unless they are part of a U.N. force. (BBC)
• Astronomers announce the discovery of Sedna, a Pluto-like planetoid which is the most distant individual object known to orbit the Sun. (Caltech) (BBC) (The Australian)
• Iran will reallow the entry of UN nuclear inspectors after March 27, says IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei. (BBC) (AFP)
• Haiti recalls its ambassador of neighbouring Caribbean state Jamaica, where ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide is said to be making a personal visit. Haiti also threatens to boycott a 2-day Caricom meeting. (AP) (BBC) (Reuters)
• In the aftermath of nomination day for the Malaysian general election, Barisan Nasional wins 4 more seats in various state assemblies and another parliamentary seat, uncontested. (ChannelNewsAsia) (Toronto Star)
• Exiled Syrian Kurds storm the Syrian consulate in Geneva and other Kurds protest in Turkey and Germany at weekend violence in northeast Syria. (BBC)

March 14, 2004

• The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) wins the Spanish Legislative elections. The outgoing government's support for the US-led invasion of Iraq was cited as a major factor leading to the Socialists' 43% plurality. (El Mundo) (BBC)