Portal:Current events/December 2002

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

December 2002 was the twelfth and final month of that common year. The month, which began on a Sunday, ended on a Tuesday after 31 days.

Portal:Current events

This is an archived version of Wikipedia's Current events Portal from December 2002.

  • Intercontinental Cup
    .
  • The government of Indonesia and rebel leaders from the province of Aceh (in the north of Sumatra) have signed a peace accord which negotiators hope will bring an end to fighting in the province.
  • Venezuela's Supreme Court announced it was suspending its services, citing political harassment and condemning deadly violence during a general strike by opponents of President Hugo Chávez.
  • The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, located in
    death penalty
    unconstitutional because it amounted to the "state-sponsored murder" of innocent people.
  • A paper published in
    mental illness
    , offering the possibility of preventative treatment before a major psychotic episode.
  • Nobel Prize awards in Stockholm, Sweden and Oslo, Norway.
  • The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools revoked the accreditation of
    Atlanta, Georgia
    , for financial irregularities.
  • The UK electricity grid (see
    National Grid
    ) reports the highest ever demand of 54,430MW between 17:00 and 17:30hrs.
  • A number of US Muslim groups have initiated a class action lawsuit against the US Attorney General, John Ashcroft and the US immigration services over the arrest and detention of Muslim men.
  • A bomb believed planted by a Muslim separatist organisation killed 13 people, including a town mayor, and wounded 12 in a Christmas Eve attack in the southern Philippines town of Datu Piang.
  • Iran's state radio reported quoted a statement by airport officials, saying that pilot "carelessness" caused a plane carrying Ukrainian and Russian aerospace scientists to crash in central Iran, killing all 46 people on board.
  • Sun Microsystems won a major antitrust victory against Microsoft when a federal judge ordered Microsoft to distribute Sun's Java programming language in its Microsoft Windows operating system.
  • Chechen rebels detonate two car bombs at the Grozny headquarters of Chechnya's Russian-backed government in an apparent suicide attack, killing more than 80 people.[4]
  • North Korea expels UN weapons inspectors, and announces plans to reactivate a dormant nuclear fuel processing laboratory.[5]
  • Clonaid, the medical arm of a cult called Raëlism, who believe that aliens introduced human life on Earth, claims to have successfully cloned a human being. They claim that aliens taught them how to perform cloning, even though the company has no record of having successfully cloned any previous animal. A spokesperson said an independent agency would prove that the baby, named Eve, is in fact an exact copy of her mother.[6]
  • Presidential elections in Kenya between Uhuru Kenyatta, candidate for ruling party KANU, and Mwai Kibaki, candidate for opposition party NARC. Early reports say the latter wins a landslide victory.
  • The Kenyan electoral commission confirms that the opposition National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) has won landslide victories over the ruling KANU party in Friday's elections, ending 40 years of single party rule and 24 years of rule by Daniel arap Moi. The NARC's presidential candidate, Mwai Kibaki, led by more than 30 percentage points over the KANU's official candidate.[7]
  • Brighton, England's historic West Pier partially collapsed. It had served from the Victorian era until it was closed in 1975.[8][9]
  • The Israeli Supreme Court rules that reservists may not refuse to serve in the West Bank or Gaza because of their objection to Israeli government policies. The Court ruled "the recognition of selective conscientious objection might loosen the links that hold us together as a people."
  • Three Americans (the director, a doctor, and the administrator) at the Baptist hospital in Jibla, Yemen, were killed and one pharmacist was injured by Abed Abdul-Razzak Kamal. Kamal was captured and claims he was linked to the extremist Islamic Reform Party. Another member of his alleged cell, Ali al-Jarallah, was arrested for shooting a Yemeni left-wing politician on Sunday.
  • The United Nations Security Council voted 13–0, with two abstentions, to revise the list of goods
    antibiotics
    Iraq is allowed to import under this program.
  • A tanker, the Amazonian Explorer, arrived in
    Petroleos de Venezuela SA
    (PdVSA), the state-owned oil company, which is aimed at forcing President Chávez to call early elections.
  • Crude oil futures on the New York market rose to $33 per barrel (208 $/m3) because of the
    Venezuelan oil strike
    and fears of war with Iraq.
  • United States troops get into a brief gun battle with paramilitary forces of the
    madrassa
    owned by former Taliban official Maulana Muhammad Hassan, according to the ANI news agency.
  • The first trial of a member of the Russian military for human rights violations in Chechnya concludes controversially, with Col. Yuri Budanov found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a psychiatric hospital for further evaluation and treatment. Budanov was charged with murder and abduction after being accused of raping and strangling Heda Kungayeva, an 18-year-old Chechen girl whom Budanov contends was a rebel sniper.[11]
December 2002
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Deaths

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Ongoing events

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Ongoing armed conflicts

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Elections

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Ongoing trials

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References

  1. ^ "Excite". Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  2. ^ Priest, Dana; Gellman, Barton (25 December 2002). "U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations". The Washington Post. Retrieved 15 February 2024.
  3. ^ "Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines". Yahoo News. Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  4. ^ "BBC NEWS - Europe - Chechnya suicide bombs kill 46". Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  5. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-10-19. Retrieved 2017-12-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. ^ "Excite". Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  7. ^ "BBC NEWS - Africa - Kenya victor vows to tackle corruption". Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  8. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,866543,00.html
  9. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2005-03-05. Retrieved 2015-06-06.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  10. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-10-19. Retrieved 2017-12-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  11. ^ "CNN.com - Court rules Russian colonel insane - Dec. 31, 2002". Retrieved 30 December 2015.