01|Ballistics tests on the rifle used in the Washington, D.C.-area sniper killings link a shooting in Silver Spring, Maryland, on September 14 to John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo. Muhammad and Malvo are accused of at least 15 other shootings that left 12 people dead in four states and the District of Columbia in September and October.|
02|The government of Sri Lanka and the leaders of the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group that has fought for the rights of the island nation's Tamil minority, agree to participate in talks exploring ways to share power and solve ethnic conflict. The discussions are the first direct step to end a civil war that has resulted in the deaths of 64,000 people over the last 19 years.|
03|Voters in Turkey, which is mired in a deep economic recession, turn the incumbent prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, and his Democratic Left Party out of office in parliamentary elections. A one-year-old political party with Islamic roots, the Justice and Development Party, takes 34 percent of the vote, which is sufficient under Turkey's election laws to form a government without a coalition partner.|
03|An earthquake of 7.9 magnitude, centered 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of Fairbanks, Alaska, rocks the interior of the state but causes little damage. The quake triggers the Trans-Alaska Pipeline's automatic detection system, prompting the Alyska Service Co. to manually shut down the pipeline and begin inspections for damage along its 800-mile (1,290 kilometer) length.|
04|A U.S. missile strike killed a senior leader of the al-Qa'ida terrorist network, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, and five associates in Yemen on November 3, announce officials with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Al-Harethi, who was traveling by car in the desert, was killed by a missile fired by an unmanned Predator aircraft. Terrorist experts describe Al-Harethi, who was also known as Abu Ali, as the senior al-Qa'ida operative in Yemen and one of the top al-Qa'ida figures in the world.|
04|Former WorldCom Chairman and Chief Executive Bernard J. Ebbers borrowed at least $1 billion either directly from the Mississippi-based telecommunications company or in company-secured bank loans, reveals a federal bankruptcy examiner. The examiner notes that Ebbers used the loans to meet margin calls on stock holdings, to construct a house, and to buy gifts for family and friends. WorldCom's bankruptcy in July 2002 was the largest in U.S. corporate history.|
05|Republicans under the leadership of President George W. Bush gain control of the U.S. Senate and enlarge their hold over the U.S. House of Representatives in midterm elections that political experts describe as historic. George W. Bush is the first president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 to see his party gain strength in both the House and the Senate two years into a first term.|
05|The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvey Pitt, resigns under intense criticism that he was too closely associated with the corporations and accounting firms that he was supposed to be regulating. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress attacked Pitt for appointing William Webster, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, to head a new accounting oversight board. Pitt failed to disclose that Webster in 2001 headed the audit committee at U.S. Technologies Inc., which is under SEC investigation for fraud.|
05|Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel dissolves the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and calls for early elections in January 2003. Ariel Sharon's coalition government collapsed with the resignation on October 30 of Labor Party ministers.|
06|The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, cuts the prime interest rate, the rate banks charge each other for overnight loans, by half a percentage point. The drop brings the prime down to 1.25 percent. Economists expect the drop to bring commercial lending rates down to their lowest level since the 1950's.|
06|The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, confirms Benjamin Netanyahu as foreign minister. Political experts predict that Netanyahu, who served as Israel's prime minister from 1996 to 1999, will attempt to assume leadership over Israel's Likud Party and oust the current prime minister, Ariel Sharon.|
06|Representative Richard A. Gephardt (D., Missouri) resigns as minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives. His resignation comes one day after Democrats lost at least five seats in the House and control of the Senate in midterm elections.|
07|A new test that detects whether someone is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in as short a time as 20 minutes is by approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Public health officials suggest that the test's speed may induce many more people into being tested, which would likely slow the spread of the disease.|
08|The UN Security Council unanimously endorses a resolution designed to force Iraq to surrender its weapons of mass destruction. The resolution demands that Iraq open all programs, plants, and materials that could be used for weapons production to UN inspectors within 45 days. U.S. President George W. Bush warned on November 7 that Iraq faces "the severest consequences" if it does not comply with the new UN demands. Saddam had until November 15 to formally accept the resolution.|
09|A crowd of some 450,000 European protesters march through Florence, Italy, in an antiglobalization demonstration that turns into a massive but peaceful rally against a possible U.S.-led war on Iraq.|
10|Severe storms that spawn dozens of tornadoes sweep across 13 states, from Illinois and Louisiana on the West to Pennsylvania and North Carolina on the East. The storms kill 36 people, injure more than 200 others, and destroy several rural communities. At least 16 people are killed in Tennessee, including 7 people in the town of Mossy Grove, the area hardest hit by the storms.|
11|The U.S. current public health system is too fragmented and underfunded to respond effectively to the threats posed by emerging infections and bioterrorism, announces the Institute of Medicine (IOM), a division of the National Academy of Sciences. The organization's latest and most comprehensive analysis of public health notes that while U.S. per capita expenditure for health care--$4,657 in 2000--is the highest in the world, the United States ranks 37th in the World Health Organization's assessment of the guality of its health system compared with other developed nations. The authors of the IOM report urge reform of health care availability in the United States in light of the number of U.S. citizens without health insurance, which exceeded 41 million in 2001.|
12|Students at Tehran University and at schools in five other Iranian cities stage massive demonstrations to protest the death sentence issued to a scholar for challenging the authority of Iran's hard-line clerics. Experts on Iranian political affairs suggest that Hashem Aghajari, a friend of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, was condemned in an effort to intimidate other reformers and to force the president to withdraw proposed laws limiting the power of the cleric-controlled Guardian Council.|
12|The Arab satellite television network, al Jazeera, broadcasts an audiotape in which Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qa'ida terrorist network, praises terrorist strikes in Moscow and Bali in October. The tape, which U.S. intelligence experts believe to be an authentic recording of Bin Laden's voice, appears to provide the first proof in more than a year that the man who is credited with masterminding the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, is alive. On the tape, Bin Laden threatens retaliation against any Western nation that aids the United States in a possible attack on Iraq.|
13|Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Al-Douri, informs United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the government of Iraq will receive UN weapons inspectors within the timetable set by the UN resolution passed on November 8. An advanced team of inspectors is scheduled to arrive in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, on November 18.|
14|Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives choose Nancy Pelosi, who represents a district in San Francisco, as their minority leader. She is the first woman ever to head a party in either the House or the Senate.|
14|A spokesperson for President George W. Bush's administration announces that private contractors will be asked to provide bids to take over as many as 850,000 federal jobs over the next two years. The intent of the administration is to save government money by ensuring the lowest cost for many routine duties. A spokesperson for the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents 600,000 federal workers, resonds that the Bush administration is declaring "war on federal employees."|
14|China's Communist Party announces that Hu Jintao, a 59-year-old government official little known outside the party's inner circle, is replacing Jiang Zemin as party leader. The person who heads the Communist Party generally is regarded as China's leader. Experts on Chinese politics note, however, that Jiang, who is 76 years old, plans to remain the head of the Central Military Commission, meaning he will retain control over an Army of some 3 million soldiers.|
15|Palestinian militants, armed with grenades and assault weapons, attack the troops guarding a colony of about 450 Israeli settlers in Hebron, on the West Bank. At least 12 Israelis are killed and 16 others are wounded. The radical Islamic Jihad claims responsibility for the attack.|
16|Abdullah Gul, a political moderate, is chosen to be Turkey's next prime minister. Gul belongs to, but is not the leader of the Justice and Development Party, a group with Islamic roots that won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections on November 3. The leader of the party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is barred from holding office because he was convicted in 1998 for advocating the establishment of an Islamic government, which Turkey's Constitution prohibits.|
17|Two undercover Israeli sky marshals aboard a El Al flight out of Tel Aviv overpower a 23-year-old Israeli Arab attempting to kick in the locked cockpit door. The plane lands safely at Turkey's Ataturk International Airport where officials describe the assailant as a "terrorist" armed with a knife.|
18|A special spy review court grants U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Federal Bureau of Investigation broad new powers to wiretap the telephones of individuals who may be associated with foreign terrorists. The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review overturns a ruling made in May by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, which had ruled that a "wall" must be maintained between spying on foreign agents and investigating citizens suspected of criminal activities. Legislation passed in 1978 in the wake of the Watergate scandal established the courts to oversee the use of wiretaps by government intelligence operations.|
18|The government of the United States warns Iraq that it has violated the United Nations (UN) resolution passed on November 8 by continuing to fire on U.S. and British warplanes patrolling no-fly zones over Iraq. The warning stops short of using the violation as sufficient reason to go to war.|
18|The U.S. District Court in Montgomery, Alabama, rules that a granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments currently in the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court is unconstitutional and must be removed within 30 days. Federal Judge Myron Thompson writes that the monument violates the U.S. Constitution's Establishment Clause, which mandates the separation of church and state. Evangelical Christians paid for the monument, which was installed in the court's rotunda in 2001 by the chief justice.|
19|The U.S. Senate passes legislation, previously passed in the House, to create the Department of Homeland Security, which is to coordinate government efforts in the war on terrorism. Senate Democrats attempted but failed to strip the bill of a series of controversial provisions, which include removing civil service job protection from all Homeland Security employees; and granting all federal, state, and local government agencies the authority to obtain Internet and e-mail records of U.S. citizens from Internet service providers. The new department absorbs 22 existing federal agencies with more than 170,000 employees.|
19|Congress passes legislation that protects insurance companies against catastrophic losses in future terrorist attacks. The law makes U.S. taxpayers, rather than private insurance companies, liable for the first $90 billion in financial losses in case of future attacks.|
19|The Prestige, a single-hull oil tanker owned by a company registered in Liberia, breaks apart and sinks 133 miles (215 kilometers) off Spain's northwest coast. The tanker's cargo of at least 2 million gallons (7.5 million liters) of intermediate-grade fuel oil threatens Spanish coastal areas with massive oil contamination.|
20|A vaccine developed to prevent cervical cancer has been found to be nearly 100 percent effective, reports the head of a study of the vaccine conducted at 16 universities in the United States and at the Merck Research laboratories, a unit of Merck & Company of Rahway, New Jersey. The vaccine, which was tested on 2,392 women over a period of 27 months, works by making women immune to a sexually transmitted virus that causes many cases of cervical cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved use of the vaccine.|
21|A Palestinian suicide bomber detonates an explosive device on a city bus in Jerusalem, killing 11 people and wounding 30 others. Many of the casualties were students on their way to school.|
21|A top leader of the al-Qa'ida terrorist network has been captured and is in U.S. custody, confirms law enforcement officials with the U.S. government. Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation allege that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri masterminded the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 and the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. He is believed to be the most senior al-Qa'ida leader to be captured.|
22|The leaders of the 19 member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization conclude their meeting in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, after extending invitations to seven eastern European Nations to join the military alliance. They also voted to create a 20,000-member rapid-response force with a "global reach." International affairs experts note that extending NATO's focus from European defense to global trouble-shooter is a major departure from the alliance's original mission.|
22|Officials with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announce that the agency is relaxing current regulations mandating that U.S. power plants, factories, and refineries must upgrade antipollution equipment when existing facilities are modernized. An EPA spokesperson notes that the regulations discourage renovation and investment in new infrastructure.|
23|Four days of riots force hundreds of Christians to flee the Nigerian city of Kaduna, which is 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Abuja, the commercial capital. The violence between Muslims and Christians was sparked by a newspaper article written in response to Islamic criticism of the Miss World Beauty pageant, which was to be staged in Nigeria in early December. The author of the article suggested that Mohammed, the founding prophet of Islam, might have regarded the pageant as an opportunity for choosing a new wife from among the contestants. The riots left at least 215 people dead, 500 others injured, and some 4,500 people homeless. Eight mosques and 22 churches were destroyed. Miss World officials relocated the contest to London.|
24|The government of Iraq sends a letter to the United Nations (UN) protesting that the UN resolution passed by the Security Council on November 8 serves as little more than a pretext for the United States to attack Iraq. The resolution demands that Iraq open all government facilities, including President Saddam Hussein's numerous palaces, to UN inspectors searching the country for weapons of mass destruction.|
25|United Nations (UN) weapons inspectors arrive in Iraq to begin their search for weapons of mass destruction. The team of 18 inspectors plans to begin on November 27, examining an undisclosed site for possible clues that Iraq has resumed chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs since UN inspections were last allowed into the country in 1998.|
25|U.S. President George W. Bush signs the Homeland Security bill into law and nominates Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania who has been the Bush administration's domestic security coordinator, to run the new department. Officials with the Bush administration expect the Department of Homeland Security to be up and running by March 2003.|
25|More than 100 foreign nationals suspected of being involved in terrorist activities received visas allowing them access to the United States in 2002, reveal officials with the General Accounting Office (GAO), an independent agency within the legislative branch of the government. According to the GAO, the visas were granted because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), responsible for conducting background checks on certain visa applicants, failed to report any negative findings to the Immigration and Naturalization Service within the specified time period. The GAO discovered that the FBI failed to conduct any background checks on visa applicants in the first three months of 2002.|
26|Women, for the first time, account for 50 percent of adults infected with HIV--more than 42 million people worldwide in 2002, reports the United Nations (UN). Women account for 58 percent of HIV infections in sub-Sahara Africa, where 1 in 11 adults is infected with the virus. According to the UN report, the number of people with HIV in eastern Europe and central Asia, which includes Russia and the former Soviet Republics, increased from 1,500 in 1992 to 1.2 million in 2002. Approximately 4 million people in India and 1 million people in China are infected with the virus.|
26|The U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP, the value of all goods and services produced in a given period) rose at a rate of 4 percent in the third quarter of 2002, report U.S. Department of Commerce officials. The growth rate exceeds the department's earlier estimate of 3.1 percent for the quarter.|
27|U.S. President George W. Bush appoints Henry A. Kissinger to head an independent investigation into the terrorist attacks against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Kissinger served as U.S. secretary of state between 1973 and 1977, serving in the administrations of both Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The commission is to conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into the causes of the attacks, whether they could have been averted, and how future attacks might be prevented.|
28|Three suicide bombers detonate explosive devices in the lobby of an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombassa, a predominately Islamic city on Kenya's coast along the Indian Ocean. At least 13 people, 10 Kenyans and 3 Israelis, are killed. Minutes before the bombings, terrorists fired two shoulder-launched missiles at a crowded Israeli passenger jet taking off from the Mombassa airport. The heat-sensing rockets missed their targets.|
28|Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon handily defeats Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an election for leadership of the governing Likud Party. Sharon takes 59 percent of the vote, compared with Netanyahu's 38 percent.|
29|Colombia's strongest right-wing paramilitary force, the United Self-Defense Forces, declares a unilateral cease-fire as a first step to initiating peace talks toward ending a civil war that began in the 1960's.|
30|At least 47 people are trampled to death when a fire in a discotheque in downtown Caracas, Venezuela, triggers panic among the estimated 400 people attempting to escape through the single exit.|
