November 2003

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2003 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

A timeline of events in the news for November, 2003.

See Also:

Iraq Timeline
Liberian Crisis
North Korean Crisis
Hutton Inquiry
Bloody Sunday Inquiry
Road Map to Peace
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
2004 Canadian federal election
2004 U.S. Presidential Election
2004 ROC Presidential Election
Same-sex Marriage
SCO v. IBM
War on Terrorism
Afghanistan timeline November 2003

November 30, 2003

November 29, 2003

November 28, 2003

November 27, 2003

  • Scientists warn that a devastating influenza epidemic is not only inevitable but may be imminent. [38]
  • The People's Republic of China angrily rejects US anti-dumping measures on imports of televisions from China, saying that the US measures breach WTO agreements and discriminate against Chinese firms; Premier Wen Jiabao is due to visit Washington, DC next month. [39]
  • British police say that explosives have been found in the Gloucester home of a 24 year old man being held on suspicion of terrorist activity and links to Al-Qaeda; the suspect is British born of Asian origin. [40][41]
  • Kofi Annan says that the global war against AIDS is being lost. [42]
  • War on Drugs: European Union justice ministers agree to tougher anti-drug laws, but the Netherlands say its "coffee shops" -- where cannabis is openly sold and smoked -- would survive. [43]
  • Peruvian police clash with campesinos in the town of Carhuamayo (department of Junín), leaving two dead and more than 20 people injured, during a protest against mining pollution. Strikers are demanding the government hand over $58 million from the privatization of a state electricity company for the cleanup. [44]
  • At the end of the First Count of elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, and reflecting the early tallies the Democratic Unionist Party attracts the highest popular vote, with Sinn Féin coming second, the Ulster Unionist Party third and the SDLP fourth. Minor parties like the Progressive Unionist Party, the Alliance Party and the UK Unionist Party suffer major collapse, with the Women's Coalition losing all its seats. Later counts are expected to boost the middle ground UUP and SDLP, who show greater possibilities of picking up inter-party transfers than the more extreme DUP and Sinn Féin. Nevertheless, Sinn Féin is widely expected to have more MLAs than the SDLP, a reversal of the results in the 1998 Assembly elections. It is too close to call whether the previous larger UUP or the Rev. Ian Paisley's DUP will have more seats after all counts. The final results will not be known until late on Friday, when all six seats in each constituency are filled. The election was held under PR.STV. [45]
  • Plans for the handover of power in Iraq have to be revised after senior Shiites object to indirect elections. [46]
  • President George W. Bush makes a surprise visit to Baghdad to visit the American troops on Thanksgiving Day. The visit is not announced publicly until after Bush has left. [47]
  • Larry Spencer of the Canadian Alliance party makes public statements stating his desire to recriminalize homosexual behaviour in Canada to combat what he claimed was a conspiracy by the homosexual community to infiltrate social institutions to recruit children into the "homosexual lifestyle". He was quickly denounced by numerous public figures including his own party leader, Stephen Harper, who also made him resign his position as Family Issue Critic in the Canadian House of Commons with an apology. However, commentators have noted that these inflamatory homophobic statements have placed the pending vote on the proposed merger with the Progressive Conservative Party on December 6 in jeopardy by illustrating fundamental differences between the parties concerning social attitudes.

November 26, 2003

November 25, 2003

November 24, 2003

November 23, 2003

  • A BBC Correspondent programme, based on computer-generated images, suggests that the Warren Commission's controversial magic bullet theory, in which is was claimed that the same bullet hit President John F. Kennedy and Governor John Connally during Kennedy's assassination in 1963, was correct. Using state of the art computer generated images based on the Zapruder film, the programme concludes that a lone gunman could have shot Kennedy. ABC News and Court TV arrived at a similar conclusion [72]
  • Beleaguered Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze resigns. Elections will be in 45 days, but until then, Nino Burdzhanadze will be the acting president. [73] [74]
  • Nationalist party HDZ appears set to beat the ruling centre-left coaltion in Croatia's general election. [75] [76]
  • EADS, the largest European aircraft company, is doing preliminary work on a hypersonic passenger aircraft that would take the place of the recently-retired Concorde; the planning includes collaboration with Japanese firms and METI. [77] However, its subsidiary Airbus' A380 'super-jumbo' sub-sonic vehicle is the product expected to become the dominant commercial aircraft in the near-future. [78]
  • The New York Times reports that the FBI is actively monitoring and gathering intelligence on anti-war protest movements' activities, ostensibly to detect possible terrorist activity. Opponents such as the ACLU criticize the practice as regressionary to the days of J. Edgar Hoover's intense monitoring of private organizations for potential Communist links. [79] [80]
  • The People's Republic of China plans to start tests of a SARS vaccine on humans by the end of December; trials with monkeys show that the vaccine was effective. [81]
  • 10,000 trade unionists, environmentalists, and farmworkers march in Miami to protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas expansion meeting. Other street protests erupt into violent confronations with police several times throughout the day. Protester sources indicate upwards of 250 protesters incarcerated, along with reports of physical and sexual assault while in custody. [82] [83] [84] [85] [86] Other demonstrations take place in cities throughout the Americas.
  • Occupation of Iraq:
    • Three US troops are killed in Iraq, two of them in a civilian vehicle in Mosul and the third in a roadside bombing in Baquba. A mob desecrates the bodies of the Mosul victims and loots their gear. [87] [88]
    • A female acting ambassador to the USA is chosen by Iraq's Governing Council: Rend al-Rahim Francke, an Iraqi/American educated in Britain, France and Lebanon. [89]
  • A US military helicopter crashes near Bagram, Afghanistan, killing five soldiers and wounding seven. [90]
  • Indian newspapers reported on the results of an in-depth 2002 survey of 57,321 Pakistanis in 89 districts of Pakistan. Although the survey was primarily concerned with the performance of local governments, the newspapers mischaracterized its results as the "utter dissatisfaction" of Pakistanis with the government of Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. [91]

[92] [93]

November 22, 2003

November 21, 2003

November 20, 2003

November 19, 2003

November 18, 2003

November 17, 2003

  • Lord Black of Crossharbour is pushed to resign as chief executive of his media empire, which may be sold. [157]
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger is sworn in as Governor of California. [158]
  • Occupation of Iraq:
    • Izzat Ibrahim, a top general in the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein, is directly implicated in recent attacks on US troops; he is number six on the US list of most wanted Iraqis and the second-highest target still at large after the former president himself. [159]
    • Italian official Marco Calamai resigns from the U.S.-led administration running Iraq, stating that "The provisional authority simply doesn't work". He says that the Iraqis are becoming angry and that the UN needs to step in. He accuses the US of underestimating the complexity of Iraq's social structure. [160]
  • Tony Blair publicly defends his decision to invite President Bush to the UK on a state visit. [161]
  • John Allen Muhammad is unanimously convicted of all four counts in the indictment against him, including two charges of capital murder, committed during the October 2002 sniper shootings in the Washington, DC metro area. The jury is currently deciding whether Muhammad will be sentenced to death or to life in prison. [162]
  • People living near remote submarine bases in the West Highlands of Scotland are to be issued with potassium iodate tablets in case of a nuclear accident. [163]
  • Coca eradication: The White House Drug Policy Office claims the area planted with coca in Peru and Bolivia combined fell by 35 km² in the year up to June, suggesting that the coca eradication program in neighboring Colombia was not driving production over the borders. But the US figures were very different from preliminary estimates in September by the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Colombia, which suggested output in Peru and Bolivia may have risen by as much 21 per cent this year.[164]
  • Chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov is level-pegging against X3D Fritz after 3 games played. [165]
  • The United States contract bridge team defeats the team from Italy to win the 2003 Bermuda Bowl in Monaco. After thirteen days and over 1000 hands of bridge, the US team wins by one point, after Italian Lorenzo Lauria plays the wrong card from the dummy to lose the last hand. [166]

November 16, 2003

November 15, 2003

November 14, 2003

November 13, 2003