Portal:Current events/October 2002

• Hurricane Lili strikes near Intercoastal City, Louisiana, as a Category One hurricane weakened from the significant Category Four storm it was just 10 hours earlier.

• Bertrand Delanoë, mayor of Paris, gets stabbed in the abdomen at city hall during the Nuits Blanches event.

• The Limburg, a French oil tanker, explodes off the coast of Yemen, in a terrorist attack.
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict: In the West Bank village of Akraba, Jewish settlers fire upon Palestinians picking olives, shooting dead 24-year-old Hani Yusuf and wounding another. Israelis soldiers shoot dead Samir Nursi, an Islamic Jihad gunman, in a gun battle in the Jenin refugee camp.

• Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Israeli troops raid Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, killing 13 (10 from a helicopter missile) and wounding as many as 100, after Palestinians fire a rocket at a Jewish settlement in the area. Later Palestinians kidnap and kill Rajeh Abu Lehiya, chief of the Palestinian riot police, and two others die in gunfire during a police-Hamas supporters conflict.
• Stock market downturn of 2002: Nasdaq falls 1.8% to 1119.40, the Dow Jones Industrial Average index falls 1.4% to 7422.84, and the S&P falls 1.91% to 785.28, levels not reached since August 1996, mid-1997, and spring of 1997 respectively.
• Announcement of the discovery of Quaoar, a planetoid object circling the Sun.

• Public Interest group Harvardwatch released a report on Harken's partnership with Harvard University.

• The European Commission of the European Union has announced that ten countries – Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia – have met its criteria for entry, opening the way for an expansion of the EU from 15 member states to 25. The European Parliament has still to consider each candidate individually and the final decision will require the approval of the current member states.
• Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom is making various ceremonial appearances in Canada in her role as the Queen of Canada.

• Lawrence Lessig argues Eldred v. Ashcroft in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The case challenges retroactive copyright extensions passed by Congress, and potentially affects millions of copyrighted works.

• France confirms that an explosion aboard French oil tanker Limburg off the coast of Yemen was, indeed, a terrorist act.
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
  • A suicide bomber killed a 71-year-old woman and injured several other at a bus stop near Tel Aviv, Israel.
  • A large crowd of Palestinian police officers and militiamen marched in a funeral procession for a policeman killed by a Hamas militiaman. Hamas claims that, although they did not authorize the killing, it was justified under Islamic law.

• Hungarian Holocaust survivor Imre Kertész wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel Committee singled out his 1975 novel Fateless, a semiautobiographical account of a boy sent to Auschwitz who survives by detaching himself from the everyday gritty reality.
• In the journal Nature, anthropologist Milford Wolpoff and colleagues at the University of Michigan argued that the fossil skull discovered in Chad in July is not that of an early human, but of an ape.

• The International Court of Justice grants sovereignty over the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon and not Nigeria.

• U.S. plan to invade Iraq
  • The United States Senate voted to give war powers to President George W. Bush as part of the ongoing conflict between the United States and Iraq.
• Myyrmanni bombing
  • A suicide bomber explodes at the Myyrmanni Shopping Mall in Vantaa, Finland, killing seven including the bomber.
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
  • United States embassy guards in Tel Aviv, Israel, stopped a suicide bomber from setting off a bomb in a crowded beachfront cafe.
• More than 10,000 supporters of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat rallied in Gaza City to show strength against Hamas.

• Jimmy Carter is honored with the Nobel Peace Prize.

• 2002 Bali bombings: A car-bomb on the Indonesian island of Bali explodes outside a nightclub killing at least 182 people, 75% of whom are said to have been foreign holidaymakers. Another 210 people are said to have been injured. The principal suspects for this terrorist incident are a group seeking to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiyah, although it could equally be the work of al-Qaeda. Another bomb explodes at around the same time in the nearby town of Denpasar, Bali. It had been said to be an attack on Australian holidaymakers due to its role in the liberation of East Timor.
• Ethnic rioting in India results in numerous deaths. The riots are said to be a reaction to recent public comments by Jerry Falwell, American televangelist, derogatory of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad.

• 2002 Bali bombings: U.S. President George W. Bush amongst many others has condemned the perpetrators of the Bali car bombing of October 11. The death toll has now risen to at least 187.

• 2002 Bali bombings: Indonesia's defense minister blamed al-Qaida and its extremist allies for the massive bomb attack that killed more than 180 people at a nightclub on the resort island of Bali.
• United Kingdom took back the reins of government in Northern Ireland amid a crisis in the peace process provoked by a spying scandal, but vowed to try and restore home rule early next year. See also Good Friday Agreement.
• The Washington sniper strikes again for the twelfth time at 9:15 p.m. at a Home Depot in Falls Church, Virginia, making Linda Franklin the ninth fatality. (Washington Post)

• The San Francisco Giants defeated the St. Louis Cardinals, four games to one, to win the National League Championship Series and move on the World Series. They will play the Anaheim Angels, who defeated the Minnesota Twins four games to one to win the American League Championship Series.

• A Kyiv judge ordered prosecutors to open a criminal probe of Ukraine's veteran President Leonid Kuchma, on charges of corruption and abuse of power.
• ImClone Systems founder Sam Waksal pleaded guilty to bank fraud and conspiracy in an insider trading scandal that threatens Martha Stewart and her home decorating empire.

• U.S. plans to invade Iraq: Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, was signed into law by President George W. Bush.

• Seven members of the Dawson family were murdered in Baltimore, Maryland in retribution for opposing local drug activity

• Politics of the Netherlands
  • The cabinet of Balkenende resigns. Because of the constant internal fighting in the new party LPF, the other two governing parties, CDA and VVD decided that continuing the coalition was impossible. It seems almost certain that there will be new elections, possibly as early as December.
  • Officials in Brussels fear that the collapse in the Netherlands will delay the expansion of the EU. The Netherlands cabinet was already divided on the issue and if new elections are to be held it may take 4–5 months before another cabinet is installed that is willing to make a decision.
• Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer sign the coalition treaty for the second red-green cabinet of Germany.

• Zamboanga bombings: Two bombs exploded in the main shopping district of the mostly Christian city of Zamboanga in the southern Philippines, killing six and wounding about 150. It was the second major evident terrorist incident in southeast Asia in less than a week. Suspicion immediately focused on Jemaah Islamiyah, an Islamic extremist group also being investigated for the October 11 Bali car bombing, in which more than 180 people died.
• U.S. officials announce the existence of a clandestine North Korea nuclear weapons program, admitted to by North Korean officials.
• There is further evidence for the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy. The object Sagittarius A* has now been identified as the black hole at the galactic centre by a team led by Rainer Schödel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, who observed the behavior of the star S2 which is near Sagittarius A*.

• October 18, 2002 Manila bus bombing: A bomb exploded in suburban Manila, destroying a bus and killing at least three people, while 23 others were wounded. A grenade exploded in the Philippine capital's financial district hours earlier. The bomb attacks occurred only one day after two deadly bombings in the southern Philippines.
• An armed individual entered a school in Stuttgart, Germany and held five people hostage, demanding a ransom for their release. The hostages were known to be four schoolchildren and one teacher. The 16-year-old subsequently released the hostages and surrendered peacefully.
• Valentin Tsvetkov, governor of the Russian Far East region of Magadan, was assassinated on the streets in Moscow, in what authorities claim was probably a contract killing.

• Chess champion Vladimir Kramnik and the computer program Deep Fritz have drawn the Brains in Bahrain match, a series of eight games, with four points each.

• Canadian author Yann Martel won the Booker Prize for his "quirky fable" Life of Pi. The prize is worth £50,000 ($77,300). Martel's work was picked from 130 novels from Britain, Ireland.
• The German Bundestag made Gerhard Schröder again Chancellor. He was elected with 305 votes, one vote out of the 306 red-green coalition missing. After that, the new ministers of the Bundesregierung were appointed.

Politicians and Elections

• Moscow theatre siege, Second Chechen War: Suspected Chechen guerrillas took hundreds hostage in a theater in Moscow, threatening to blow up the building and demanding withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya.
• Washington sniper: Police reported that a ransom note was left at the scene of the latest shooting by the person believed to have shot 13 people and killed 9. The note apparently demanded $10 million, and it contained a threat to local residents saying, "Your children are not safe anywhere at any time."

• Moscow theatre siege, Second Chechen War: The Chechen rebels holding hundreds of hostages in a Moscow theater shot and killed one captive and said they were ready to die for their cause, warning that thousands more of their comrades were "keen on dying."
• Beltway sniper: Within hours of Police Chief Charles Moose announcing that John Allen Muhammad was wanted in connection with the investigation, Muhammad and his 17-year-old stepson John Lee Malvo were arrested on federal weapons charges, found with the rifle used in the shootings.

• Moscow theatre siege, Second Chechen War: The Chechen separatist "suicide squad" release eight children, but keep some 700 people hostage in a Moscow theater rigged with explosives. Diplomats wait for the gunmen to honor a pledge to free about 75 foreigners among their hostages, including Australians, Austrians, Britons, Germans and three Americans.
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Hundreds of Israeli soldiers backed by scores of tanks and other military vehicles took control of the Palestinian city of Jenin in response to a suicide bombing that killed 14 people.

• IBM announces that its Blue Gene petaflop supercomputer architecture will use the Linux operating system.

• Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi dissolved the country's Parliament, officially starting the campaign for one of the African Great Lakes country's most competitive general elections and closing his tenure as one of Africa's longest ruling leaders.
• The Alberta Alliance Party is officially registered with Elections Alberta.

• Moscow theatre siege, Second Chechen War: Special forces of the Russian army attack the Chechen separatists who were holding hostages in a Moscow theater. Fifty of the 53 separatists and 117 of the 800 hostages are killed. Most of hostages were killed by poison gas used by the special forces, with most of the surviving hostages hospitalised with gas poisoning.
• The Anaheim Angels force a decisive seventh game with the San Francisco Giants in the 2002 World Series with a dramatic late-inning rally from 5–0 to win 6–5.

• Leftist Luis Inácio Lula da Silva handily wins Brazil's presidential election.

• The Anaheim Angels win the 2002 World Series by four games to three, with a 4–1 win over the San Francisco Giants in Game 7.
• Emmitt Smith of the Dallas Cowboys passes Walter Payton as the NFL's leading rusher in a 17–14 loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

• The ITV London area television network London Weekend Television closes and Carlton Communications took over the channel.

• Rockstar Games Video games series Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City October 27, 2002 released came out that day.

• Three nursing professors are shot dead at the University of Arizona by a student flunking out of the nursing program. Robert J. Flores, Jr., 41, shot and killed Robin Rogers, 50, Barbara Monroe, 45, and Cheryl McGaffic, 44, before turning the gun on himself. Two of the teachers were shot in a classroom and the gunman allowed the students to leave before killing himself.
• Team Bath become the first university team to qualify for the FA Cup First Round since 1882. They beat Horsham 4–3 on penalties in the Fourth Qualifying Round replay.

• Moscow theatre siege, Second Chechen War: Some medical experts now believe that the Moscow hostages and terrorists were gassed with a military incapacitating agent such as BZ or a similar substance. Others claim that a fentanyl derivative may have been used. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow stated that it believed that the substance was an opiate. Other candidates suggested include the Russian incapacitating agent Kolokol-1 and aerosolized Valium. Yet another medical expert has stated that the gas used is a common anaesthetic gas that is commonly used in Europe.
• The crime novelist Patricia Cornwell announces DNA evidence possibly linking the painter Walter Sickert to one of the many letters claiming to be from the 19th century serial killer Jack the Ripper.
• The Canadian ministry of foreign affairs issues an advisory to Canadians born in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and Sudan warning them to "consider carefully" whether to go to the United States for "any reason". This follows a US law requiring photos and fingerprints of Canadian citizens born in those countries upon entering the US, as well as the deportation to Syria of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen. The American ambassador, Paul Cellucci, later assures the Canadian government that all Canadian passport holders will be treated equally; however, further incidents attributed to racial profiling take place.

• The government of Canada issued a travel advisory to the United States for all Canadian citizens born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan or Syria after the United States announced that anyone born in those countries will be photographed and fingerprinted upon arrival in the United States.
• The European Union accuses tobacco company R. J. Reynolds of selling black market cigarettes to drug traffickers and mobsters from Italy, Russia, Colombia and the Balkans.
• The Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party chose former Vice President of the United States Walter Mondale as their candidate for the United States Senate seat of recently deceased Senator Paul Wellstone from Minnesota.

• Nine bombs explode in Soweto, South Africa and the vicinity and one near Pretoria.
• Over a million people gather in Greenwich Village to celebrate Halloween.
• Pat Buchanan denounces Canada as Soviet Canuckistan over the warning issued by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs regarding travel to the US.
• The Russian Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko has now stated that the incapacitating agent used in the storming of the Moscow theatre siege was a fentanyl derivative.