01|British forces in southern Iraq come under Iraqi missile attack for the first time since the war began on March 19. The attacks on a Royal Marine encampment at Umm Qasr, near the Persian Gulf, are made as British forces attempt to consolidate their positions in the south, particularly around the city of Basra.|
01|U.S. Marines wage a fierce artillery firefight with Iraqi forces in and around Ad Diwaniyah, a town approximately 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Baghdad, the capital. After taking some 20 Iraqi soldiers prisoner, coalition forces enter the town and destroy the headquarters of the ruling Ba'ath Party and the local military headquarters from which rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the Marines.|
02|Coalition forces, driving toward Baghdad, cross the Tigris River and destroy the Baghdad Division of Iraq's Republican Guard. U.S. Brigadier General Vince Brooks notes that the elimination of the division opens a direct avenue to the capital. In Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad, an estimated 15,000 U.S. troops rout two other Republican Guard divisions and begin moving toward the nearby Euphrates River. According to military experts, the final drive to Baghdad is to be a three-pronged push, with two columns of U.S. troops moving up either side of the Euphrates.|
02|U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announces that the United States will be allowed to move food, fuel, and other supplies for coalition forces into Iraq through Turkey. Powell makes the announcement after completing talks with members of the Turkish government in Ankara, the capital.|
02|A U.S. Department of Defense spokesperson reports that 51 members of the U.S. Armed Forces have been killed in Iraq. Fifteen U.S. soldiers are missing in action, and seven others have been captured. The government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair announces that 27 British troops had been killed since the war began on March 19.|
02|At least 16 people are killed when a bomb explodes outside a ferry terminal in Davao City on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. The ferry terminal is less than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) from an airport where a similar bomb killed 23 people on March 4. Terrorist experts attribute both explosions to the Jemaah Islamiyah, an Islamic militant group believed to have ties to the al-Qa'ida terrorist network.|
02|Factory orders in the United States dropped 1.5 percent in February, announces a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Commerce. The drop is the steepest in five months.|
03|U.S. forces in Iraq meet little resistance in their advance on Baghdad. The U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division, closing in from the southwest, pushes forward to Saddam International Airport, approximately 12 miles (20 kilometers) from Baghdad and takes up positions in anticipation of a battle for control of the airfield. Other Army units move forward to within 6 miles (10 kilometers) of the capital. U.S. Marines, racing toward the city from the southeast, meet only scattered opposition from Republican Guards and managed to cover 20 miles (32 kilometers) in a few hours.|
03|Afghan troops, back by U.S. special forces, arrest 13 men suspected of being members of the al-Qa'ida terrorist network. Heavy U.S. bombing drove the men from a cave in the Tor Ghar Mountains in southwestern Afghanistan. Inside the cave, the Afghan forces found a series of dwellings, motorcycles, and large caches of weapons.|
04|U.S. forces advancing from the west and southeast place Baghdad in a powerful vise that leads thousands of Iraqis to flee the city. Bumper-to-bumper traffic chokes roads leading north and northeast as U.S. ground forces seal off key highways to the south. U.S. Marines halt their advance from the southeast at the city limits, 10 miles (16 kilometers) from downtown Baghdad. They raced behind the Republican Guard's Nida Division, which put up little resistance after being bombarded through the night. West of the city, the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division completes its takeover of Saddam International Airport, which commanders renamed Baghdad International.|
04|In western Iraq, five people, including three U.S. soldiers, are killed when a suicide bomber detonates an explosive device in a car stopped at a checkpoint. The three soldiers moved within the bomb's range after one of the victims, a woman who appeared to be pregnant, got out of the vehicle and began "screaming in fear."|
04|The U.S. economy lost 108,000 jobs in March, announces the U.S. Department of Labor. Employment in the United States has declined by more than 2 million jobs since the first quarter of 2001.|
05|United Nations (UN) military observers in Congo (Kinshasa) verify that nearly 1,000 civilians were killed on April 3 in a series of attacks on 15 villages in the northeastern part of the country. The UN officials have yet to determine who carried out the attacks, which were made on the eve of negotiations to bring peace to the civil-war ravaged Ituri district.|
06|British forces in southern Iraq launch a major assault into the city of Basra. The Seventh Armoured Brigade, known as the Desert Rats, storm into the center of Iraq's second largest city with several thousand troops and hundreds of tanks. Meeting only isolated sniper and machinegun fire, the British reportedly are welcomed by hundreds of cheering and waving civilians. Major General Peter Wall notes that British forces have occupied "a lot" of Basra, but irregular militia groups continue to offer sporadic resistance.|
06|The number of people in state and federal jails and prisons in the United States topped 2 million in 2002, announces a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice. The U.S. government houses the largest number of inmates, 162,000, followed by the states of California, Texas, Florida, and New York.|
07|U.S. troops in Iraq press into the center of Baghdad and take control of a major presidential palace and other key buildings. The 3rd Infantry Division, backed by air support, meets with only scattered pockets of resistance as it rumbles into the heart of the capital with more than 70 tanks and 60 Bradley fighting vehicles. The troops seize Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's main palace on the west bank of the Tigris River and set up a prisoner of war holding pen in the compound. In the center of the city, U. S. forces occupy the Al-Rashid Hotel and the Information Ministry and use explosives to topple a statue of Hussein astride a horse. In a press briefing, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks describes the operation as a show of force that was meant to reinforce the idea that Saddam Hussein's regime was no longer in charge.|
07|A U.S. Air Force B-1 bomber drops four bombs, each weighing 2,000 pounds (900 kilograms), on a single target in an affluent Baghdad neighborhood. U.S. military officials ordered the bombardment minutes after U.S. intelligence agents reported that they believed that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, his sons, and other Iraqi leaders were meeting there in a private house. U.S. officials are unsure whether Hussein survived the bombing.|
07|Cockroaches may be spreading severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), theorizes Hong Kong Deputy Director of Health Leung Pak-yin, on how the atypical pneumonia spread so rapidly through Kowloon, the largest city in the Hong Kong administrative region. More than 300 people came down with SARS in a single Kowloon apartment block. Most of the victims had no direct contact with anyone else with the disease. Leung suggests that cockroaches carried the virus into hundreds of different apartments through the building's drainage system. According to the United Nations-affiliated World Health Organization, the death toll from SARS continues to climb. Officially, 103 people worldwide have died since the viral infection first appeared in November 2002 in Guangdong Province in southern China.|
07|The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, rules that a state ban on cross burning does not violate First Amendment rights when the purpose of the act is to intimidate or inspire fear. The ruling upholds a 50-year-old Virginia law. The majority opinion, written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, declares that while the burning of a cross "does not inevitably convey a message of intimidation. . . when a cross burning is used to intimidate, few if any messages are more powerful."|
07|The U.S. Supreme Court votes 6 to 3 to limit punitive damages imposed by state courts. The decision in favor of State Farm Insurance Company overturns as excessive a $145-million punitive damage award to a Utah couple, which also received $1 million in compensatory damages. The couple sued State Farm for refusing to settle a claim, which the couple claimed exposed them to personal liability beyond the limits of their auto insurance policy. In deciding the punitive damage award, the Utah Supreme Court considered such factors as State Farm's net worth and aspects of its business behavior in states outside Utah. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy writes that the 145-to-1 ratio between the punitive and compensatory damage awards was not "proportionate to the wrong committed" but arbitrary punishment for "perceived deficiencies of State Farm's operations throughout the country." Kennedy notes that state courts do not have a "legitimate concern" in imposing damages for conduct outside their jurisdiction.|
07|The Syracuse University Orangemen capture the team's first NCAA men's basketball championship, beating the Kansas Jayhawks 81-78 in New Orleans.|
08|More than 20 buses and trucks filled with an estimated 500 Republican Guard soldiers and Fedayeen Saddam militia fighters cross the Tigris River in Baghdad to stage a counterattack against U.S. forces holding the river's west bank. The U.S. 3rd Infantry respond with artillery and mortar fire, and A-10 attack planes strafe the Iraqis, driving them back across the river. Third Infantry tanks pursue them across two primary bridges and bombard Iraqi forces dug in on the eastern bank. The firefight leaves a high-rise government structure on the east bank of the Tigris in flames and tears through one floor of the Palestine Hotel, killing two journalists and wounding several others.|
08|U.S. Marines take control of large areas of southeastern Baghdad including the Rasheed Airport, a strategically important military installation.|
08|The University of Connecticut (UConn) women's basketball team beats the University of Tennessee 73-68 to claim UConn's fourth NCAA championship at the 2003 finals in Atlanta.|
09|The government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein collapses, and much of Baghdad, the capital, falls to U.S. forces. Allied tanks and armored vehicles meet no resistance as they sweep across the Tigris River into Baghdad's eastern sector. U.S. soldiers are greeted by cheering crowds of Iraqis attempting to topple an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein that dominates one of the city's public squares. In Baghdad's heavily populated southeastern neighborhoods, throngs of Shiite Muslims, long oppressed by the Hussein regime, cheer U.S. Marines as they push toward the center of the city. U.S. Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, speaking at a press briefing in Qatar, announces that Baghdad had been added to the list of places no longer under the control of Hussein's government. The general cautions, however, that fighting continued in other parts of Iraq and that coalition forces would not halt military action until all remnants of the Hussein regime is wiped out.|
10|Twenty-eight preschool children are killed and more than 100 others are injured when fire sweeps through a boarding school for the deaf in the Caspian Sea port town of Makhachkala.|
10|Several hundred Kurdish fighters under the command of U.S. special forces occupy Kirkuk, an oil center in northern Iraq, after a three-hour battle with Iraqi troops loyal to Saddam Hussein. The fall of Kirkuk prompts neighboring Turkey to announce that it is sending military observers into the Iraqi city. The Turkish government remains apprehensive of any Kurdish military victory that might encourage Turkey's own large Kurdish population to join a Kurdish independence movement. In Washington, D.C., a spokesperson for U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell confirms that the secretary has assured Turkey that Kirkuk would remain under the control of U.S. forces, not Kurdish fighters.|
10|Air France and British Airways announce the retirement of trans-Atlantic flights aboard the supersonic Concorde, which flew from London to New York City in 3.5 hours at a cost of $7,000 per passenger. Air France will retire its five Concordes in May, and British Airways with retire its eight Concordes in October.|
11|U.S. special forces and Kurdish fighters enter Mosul, the third largest city in Iraq and the largest in the north, without a fight. The leader of the Iraqi 5th Army Corps sent word to U.S. commanders that he wanted to surrender, and a formal ceasefire was signed. The allied occupation of Mosul leaves Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's birthplace, 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Baghdad, the last remaining target for the U.S. military. However, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense announces that the remnants of Iraq's regular army and Republican Guard are no longer capable of mounting a conventional defense.|
11|The mystery virus that killed more than 100 people worldwide since it emerged in China in November 2002 appears to be a mutant cold virus, announces an international team of international scientists. Tests on samples of the virus taken from patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) suggest that it is a new type of corona virus, the same virus that causes the common cold.|
12|Looters have ransacked the National Museum of Iraq, making off with a number of extremely important ancient artifacts, announces museum officials. Academics in the United States describe the looting of one of the world's great collections of antiquities as an archeological catastrophe.|
12|The U.S. Congress passes an $80-billion measure to fund the war in Iraq and part of the rebuilding process. President George W. Bush asked for $74 billion, but members of Congress tacked on an additional $6 billion for homeland security and other projects, including bailing out the U.S. airline industry.|
13|U.S. Marines enter Tikrit, the last remaining city in Iraq not under allied control, after subduing an Iraqi infantry unit following a fierce firefight. U.S. Brigadier General John Kelly reports that the First Marine Expeditionary Force, consisting of at least 2,500 Marines, is entering the city from the south, travelling in some 250 armored vehicles. Military experts suggest that Tikrit--Saddam Hussein's birthplace--remains a Hussein stronghold from which forces loyal to the deposed leader may mount a last stand. The city is some 90 miles (140 kilometers) north of Baghdad, the capital.|
13|Iraqi guards release seven U.S. prisoners of war to a unit of Marines near the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, after Iraqi officials abandon their posts.|
14|Coalition forces push into the center of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's ancestral home, and occupy an enormous presidential palace in the heart of the north-central Iraqi city. The commander of the operation, U.S. Brigadier General John Kelly, notes that many of the city's residents are coming forward to point out members of Hussein's Ba'ath Party and the Fedayeen Saddam militia. Tikrit was a Ba'ath Party stronghold and the last major Iraqi city to come under coalition control.|
14|A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense announces that the major combat operations in Iraq are over. Some U.S. troops are to be sent home, while others with be repositioned to establish long-term postwar stability in Iraq.|
14|The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush threatens sanctions against Iraq's neighbor Syria. A spokesperson for the Bush administration, Ari Fleischer, calls Syria a "rogue nation" and describes its president, Bashar al-Assad, as "untested." U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell accuses Syria of harboring fleeing officials of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government. He warns that the United States is examining the possibly of imposing economic and diplomatic sanctions. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accuses Syria of conducting chemical weapons tests and allowing Syrian mercenaries to cross the border into Iraq.|
14|The pro-Canada Liberal Party wins a majority in Quebec's provincial assembly, taking 75 seats, compared with the former majority party, Parti Quebecois, which takes 45 sets. During its nine years in power, Parti Quebecois campaigned for Quebec's independence from Canada. The leader of the Liberal Party and next premier of Quebec, Jean Charest, describes the Liberal Party victory as a mandate for change. Political experts suggest that the people of Quebec want the provincial government to concentrate on the economy and social issues, rather than on the question of independence.|
15|U.S. President George W. Bush declares that "the regime of Saddam Hussein is no more" and that victory in Iraq is certain, but incomplete. The president adds that he will not declare a final victory until military commanders in Iraq determine that all U.S. military objectives had been met, which could take several months.|
15|U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announces that the United States has no broader military ambitions in the Middle East. He says that there is "no war plan right now" for Syria or Iran. International affairs experts describe the statement as a signal that the Bush administration plans to use diplomacy and economic pressure to prod Syria and Iran into greater cooperation with the United States and its allies. The experts notes, however, that the secretary of state's use of the phrase "right now" is likely to fuel concerns in the Middle East about the Bush administration's ultimate intentions in that region of the world.|
15|U.S. forces in Iraq block a pipeline that was used to pump Iraqi oil to Syria. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld notes that the volume of oil being pumped to Syria violated United Nations (UN) sanctions against Iraq. U.S. officials have long suspected that Iraq was illegally exporting oil in violation of UN sanctions imposed after the Persian Gulf War in 1991.|
15|U.S. soldiers in Baghdad arrest Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestinian terrorist group that in 1985 killed a U.S. citizen after hijacking a cruise ship. Abu Abbas, also known as Mohammed Abbas, and members of a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) splinter group seized the ship, the Achille Lauro, off Port Said, Egypt, in October 1985. They demanded that Israel release 50 imprisoned Palestinians in exchange for the hundreds of passengers they had taken hostage. One of the passengers, Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old American confined to a wheelchair, was shot and tossed overboard. After two days, the group released the other passengers. U.S. officials describe Abbas's capture as proof that Saddam Hussein supported terrorists. Abbas and his PLO splinter group, the Palestine Liberation Front, have been based in Iraq for the past 17 years.|
16|European leaders gather in Athens, Greece, where 10 nations sign treaties to join the European Union (EU), an organization of European countries that promotes cooperation among its members. The expansion--the largest in European Union history--will add 75 million people to the EU and increase EU territory by 23 percent. The treaties, if ratified (approved) by referendums or parliamentary votes, allow the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia to join the EU on May 1, 2004.|
16|U.S. President George W. Bush urges the United Nations to remove all economic sanctions against Iraq, which would allow for the sale of much greater amounts of Iraqi oil to fund the country's reconstruction. The sanctions were imposed on trade with Iraq after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered his forces to invade Kuwait in 1990.|
16|American Airlines' flight attendants approve a new labor contract with wage and vacation cuts that will save the airlines $1.8 billion a year. Industry analysts believe the savings are substantial enough to keep the struggling airline, the largest in the United States, from declaring bankruptcy.|
17|Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that top executives at AMR Corp., parent company of American Airlines, fashioned financial packages for themselves that were designed to protect them in the event of the airline's bankruptcy. The top six executives planned to give themselves "retention bonuses" of twice their annual salaries as a reward for staying with the company through 2004. They also funded a trust that protects the pension benefits of the top 45 executives. The revelation comes one day after American Airlines' flight attendants and other union employees agreed to wage cuts to stave off the company's bankruptcy.|
18|A spokesperson for North Korea announces that his government either is about to begin, or has begun, reprocessing more than 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, a significant step toward producing nuclear weapons. Foreign affairs experts suggest that the announcement is intended to increase pressure on the United States during meetings between U.S., North Korean, and Chinese representatives. The meetings are scheduled to begin in China's capital, Beijing, on April 23.|
18|The March 2003 federal budget deficit hit $58.7 billion, announces the U.S. Treasury Department. The March figure brings the deficit for the first six months of fiscal year 2003 (September 2002-October 2003) to $252.6 billion, nearly twice the total for the same period one year earlier.|
19|Two U.S. Army sergeants find $656 million in U.S. currency in an exclusive Baghdad residential district. The money, sealed stacks of uncirculated U.S. $100 bills placed inside 164 matching galvanized aluminum boxes, is discovered in different locations in a neighborhood where senior Ba'ath Party officials and Republican Guard officers lived before the war.|
19|Olusegun Obasanjo is reelected president of Nigeria with 62 percent of the 42 million votes cast. His opponents allege massive vote fraud.|
20|The government of China discloses that the outbreak of the dangerous viral disease known as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is far more widespread than previously reported. Physicians in mainland China have confirmed more than 1,950 cases of SARS and have reported more than 80 deaths from the disease. In Hong Kong, 94 people have died of SARS. The government has reduced the May Day celebration, normally a weeklong national vacation, to a single day in order to discourage travel and the spread of the disease. Two top officials, the minister of health and the mayor of Beijing, have been dismissed for their roles in playing down the extent of the epidemic.|
21|Jay Garner, the retired U.S. general appointed to oversee Iraq's reconstruction, arrives in Baghdad and announces that his priority is to restore such basic services as water and electricity. A spokesperson for Garner declares that the United States does not recognize the authority of an Iraqi who has declared himself mayor of Baghdad, the capital.|
21|More than 150 people are killed in Bangladesh when two ferries--one on the Buriganga River near Dhaka, the capital, the other carrying a wedding party on the Meghna River, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Dhaka--capsize in severe tropical storms.|
22|At least 1 million Shiite Muslims throng the streets of Karbala, in central Iraq, for a religious pilgrimage that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had banned for some 25 years. Tens of thousands of Shiite men beat their chests and whip their backs as they march toward the shrine of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, Imam Husayn. The pilgrimage commemorates Husayn's death in Karbala in a battle in A.D. 680 between Muslims over who should be the rightful successor to Mohammed. Experts on the Shia branch of Islam note that the pilgrims in Karbala are using the occasion to celebrate both their faith and the end of Hussein's rule, as well as to protest the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq. Many Shiite clerics are urging followers to demand the withdrawal of coalition troops and the immediate creation of a Shia Islamic nation.|
22|U.S. soldiers find $112 million in U.S. currency in a kennel, bringing to $768 million the total in cash that has been found in a single affluent Baghdad neighborhood. All of the money has been discovered inside galvanized aluminum boxes.|
22|One of the most powerful thunderstorms in decades sweeps through the Dhubri district of the Indian state of Assam, smashing a number of villages. Thirty-six people are killed, 2,500 others are injured, and more than 3,000 are rendered homeless.|
23|Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and his prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, end a long standoff over who will fill key roles in a new Palestinian cabinet. The impasse was broken when Arafat agreed to Abbas's choice for minister of state security, Mohammed Dahlan. Dahlan was the Palestinian security chief in the Gaza Strip before falling out with Arafat. Dahlan is to report to the prime minister, not to Arafat, which Middle East experts interpret as a major challenge to Arafat's power as Palestinian leader.|
23|The World Health Organization advises people to postpone unnecessary travel to Beijing, China, and to Toronto, Canada, to avoid exposure to the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). At least 13 people have died from SARS in Toronto, the first place outside Asia that the disease was detected.|
24|The Chinese government institutes highly restrictive quarantine measures in an attempt to curb the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Health officials seal off whole villages and close down a large Beijing hospital, which is reported to have more than 100 infected patients. All elementary and middle schools in the capital are ordered closed, giving some 1.7 million school children an unscheduled two-week vacation. Rumors of even tighter quarantines prompt people in Beijing to empty grocery stores of essential items. Health officials fear that the thousands of people attempting to escape exposure to SARS by leaving the capital for their native provinces will hasten the spread of the disease.|
24|Representatives of the United States, North Korea, and China meeting in Beijing for talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program end their discussions a day earlier than planned. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell informs the Asia-Pacific Council in Washington, D.C., that the participants would return home and assess what action should be taken. He notes, however, that the North Korean representatives should not leave Beijing with the impression that the United States is intimidated by North Korea's belligerent statements. According to one U.S. official, the North Koreans implied during the talks that they had nuclear weapons and may conduct a test. Earlier in the day, the government of North Korea announced in Pyongyang, the capital, that the success of the Beijing meeting rested on the willingness of the United States to change what North Korea regards as a hostile policy. North Korea declared that relations between the two countries "hit rock bottom" when U.S. President George W. Bush in 2002 described North Korea, along with Iraq and Iraq, as part of an axis of evil.|
25|U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft claims the authority to detain undocumented immigrants for indefinite periods of time. The Florida Immigrant Advocate Center in Miami reveals that Attorney General Ashcroft signed a decision on April 18 in which he stated that he had the authority to keep illegal immigrants in indefinite custody for reasons of national security. The decision dealt specifically with an 18-year-old Haitian immigrant who was taken into custody upon applying for asylum in the United States. After a judge ordered the Haitian released on bond, Ashcroft reversed the order on the grounds that the man's release would encourage other Haitians to immigrate to the United States. The attorney general noted that a "surge" in illegal immigration from Haiti threatened national security by diverting U.S. Coast Guard resources from homeland security and counter-terrorism activities.|
25|U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismisses Thomas White as Army secretary. The Army secretary is responsible for Army installations, finances, and weapons development. Experts on the U.S. Department of Defense suggest that White's connections to Enron Corp., the failed Houston-based energy trading company, had strained relations with the defense secretary. White, a retired brigadier general, served as an Enron executive before accepting the civilian position at the Defense Department. In March 2003, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission concluded that the Enron division in which White acted as vice chairman engaged in massive manipulation of electric and natural gas markets during the California energy crisis of 2000 and 2001. White denied any knowledge of the manipulation.|
26|At least six Iraqis are killed and dozens of others wounded when an ammunition dump on the outskirts of Baghdad, the capital, explodes. U.S. guards claim that a group of Iraqis started the explosion by firing flares into the ammunition dump.|
27|The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in China appears to have plunged the economy into a major slump. New York City-based J.P. Morgan Chase, which conducts investment banking in China, estimates that the China's economy contracted from a 9.9-percent growth rate in the first quarter of 2003 to 2-percent negative growth in April. Fear of SARS has resulted in cuts in some Chinese exports, rapidly shrinking domestic retail sales, and the near collapse of both foreign and domestic tourism.|
28|U.S. soldiers open fire on Iraqis at an antiwar demonstration in Allujhah, killing 15 people and wounding about 75 others. An American officer notes that soldiers fired on the crowd of 200 to 3000 people only after being shot at by some of the protesters. Iraqis dispute that claim, insisting that the attack by the U.S. soldiers was unprovoked.|
28|Ten of the largest U.S. securities firms agree to pay approximately $1.4 billion in fines to end federal and state investigations into whether the companies gave customers misleading stock recommendations during the market boom in the late 1990's. The settlement forces the brokerage firms to make sweeping changes in how stock-research practices are conducted. It also bars brokerages from passing out lucrative stock deals to top executives or directors of public companies in order to curry their favor. By the terms of the settlement, the 10 firms may not deduct their fines as a business expense on federal taxes or seek reimbursement from their insurance carriers. The New York State attorney general and regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission accused the companies of misinforming customers about the true value of stocks in exchange for highly profitable investment banking fees.|
28|U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld confirms that the United States is pulling virtually all of its troops out of Saudi Arabia. The announcement comes one day after the U.S. Department of Defense disclosed that it was moving its major air operations center in the Middle East from Saudi Arabia to Qatar. Military experts suggest that the moves are the beginning of a major shift in the U.S. military presence in the region.|
29|The Palestinian parliament confirms Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister, clearing the way for a U.S.-backed Mideast peace plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian violence that has raged since September 2000.|
29|The World Health Organization (WHO) lifts an advisory against unnecessary travel to Toronto, Canada, because of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Although 21 people have died of SARS in Toronto and at least 5 others in the city remain in critical condition, WHO officials note that no new cases of SARS have been reported in the general community since April 9 and no new cases have been reported in the city hospital system, where the disease has been concentrated, since April 20.|
30|A diplomatic coalition made up of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations presents a detailed peace plan to leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The seven-page document, known as the road map, is designed to end more than 30 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence and restart peace negotiations. The first of the plan's three phases calls on the Palestinian Authority to make "visible efforts" to stop attacks on Israelis, confiscate illegal weapons, and hold free elections. It calls on Israel to dismantle Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip built after March 2001 and gradually withdraw from disputed areas. The ultimate aim is the establishment of an independent Palestinian nation by 2005.|
