Every day, news articles appear that mention new, unfamiliar, but (now) important people, places, things, and concepts. Wikipedia can and should become a resource for background information on the topics behind these current events. For more information on contributing to this page, see current events article development. For information on contributing to the Current events section on the main page, see current events on Main Page.
See Wikipedia:Announcements for project-specific news.
Ongoing events and developing stories
- Israeli-Palestinian conflict - War on Terrorism - U.S. plan to invade Iraq - terrorist incidents
- ongoing Venezuela general strike
- stock market downturn of 2002 - Corporate accounting scandals - South American economic crisis of 2002 - debate over US steel tariffs
- UK Firefighter strike 2002
- more . . .
These are entries which cover current events, that is, events that are ongoing and may have historical significance. These entries should be edited with an eye to historicity, while including timely information in a way not possible with paper encyclopedias.
Current events
- Insurance and finance company Conseco Inc., deep in debt and facing a federal investigation of its accounting practices, filed for Chapter 11 protection in the third-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
- An Indian court sentenced three men to death for treason, for their assistance in helping five gunmen prepare for the December 13, 2001 attack on the national Parliament which killed nine people and nearly triggered a war with nuclear rival Pakistan. Death sentences, which are carried out by hanging, are rare in India.
- Matsushita and Sony have announced that they are collaborating on the development of a "Linux platform for digital home electronic devices"
- Congo's government, rebels and opposition parties signed a peace accord to end four years of civil war and set up a transitional government to lead Africa's third-largest nation to its first democratic elections since independence in 1960.
- The Bush administration announced it will begin begin deploying a limited system to defend the United States against ballistic missiles by 2004.
- ElcomSoft is found not guilty on 4 counts of DMCA violations, in the first important test case involving the controversial law.
- Former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic pled guilty to one count of crimes against humanity at the Hague tribunal for her part in persecuting Bosnian Muslims and Croats during the 1992-95 conflict, which left 200,000 dead or missing.
- Protesters blockaded highways in and around Caracas as the opposition, angered by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's resolve to hang on to power, called for an escalation in its campaign to remove him.
- Former US Vice President and 2000 Presidential candidate Al Gore announces on the CBS program 60 Minutes that he will not seek election to the Presidency in 2004.
- The Vatican announces that Pope John Paul II has accepted the resignation of Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law due to widespread outcry among Boston Catholics over Law's role in covering up pedophilia-related and other sex crimes among priests in his diocese.
- US Senate majority leader Trent Lott apologizes on television amid growing outcry for his resignation from both ends of the political spectrum for comments made at Senator Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party which seemed to support Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential campaign platform.
- The Geminid meteor shower peaks tonight. Best viewing is between midnight and dawn.
- Henry Kissinger stepped down as the chairman of a panel investigating the September 11 attacks, citing conflict of interest with his clients. The choice of Kissinger by President George W. Bush had been severely criticized in some quarters because of claims that Kissinger is a war criminal and a master of covering up past events.
- The European Union invited Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Cyprus and Malta to join. Expansion is scheduled for May of 2004.
- First flight of the ESC-A variant of the Ariane 5 is a failure, with the rocket and the two communications satellites it was carrying destroyed a few minutes after lift-off from Kourou, French Guiana.
- South African police seize 384kg of explosives found in a truck belonging to Tom Vorster, alleged leader of the right-wing terrorist group the Boeremag.
- 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 Chavez.
- The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, located in New York, reversed a lower court ruling that found the federal death penalty unconstitutional because it amounted to the "state-sponsored murder" of innocent people.
- A paper published in The Lancet by a team led by Christos Pantelis from the University of Melbourne suggests that it may be possible to predict the onset of schizophrenia using magnetic resonance imaging of the brain. If so, this will be the first time that brain scans have been used to predict the onset of a mental illness, offering the possibility of preventative treatment before a major psychotic episode.
- Nobel prize awards in Stockholm, Sweden and Oslo, Norway.
- The Southern Associaton of Colleges and Schools revoked the accreditation of Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia for financial irregularities.
- Sports Illustrated magazine announces that cyclist Lance Armstrong is their Sportsman of the Year.
- Two paintings by Vincent van Gogh were stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam overnight. Coming shortly after a large diamond theft from an exhibition at the Museon in The Hague, it casts doubt on the high-tech security systems.
- Miss Turkey, Azra Akin from Almelo, won the Miss World competition which had been moved from Nigeria to London because of religious violence.
- A massive fire destroys the pioneering Informatics department of the University of Edinburgh and a major venue for the Edinburgh Fringe in the Old Town.
- The Chechen separatist Akhmed Zakayev has returned to London, where he is expected to seek asylum. He was arrested but released soon afterwards on bail paid by Vanessa Redgrave.
- Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Israeli troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships swept into the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on Friday, provoking a gunbattle and killing 10 people, Palestinian witnesses and medics said.
- Venezuela's oil exports ground to a halt, negotiations stalled and protesters faced off on the streets as prospects dimmed for a peaceful resolution to a strike designed to unseat President Hugo Chavez.
- In continuing legal action against Exxon over the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, punitive damages against the company have been reduced from $5000 to $4000 million. The company is expected to appeal.
- Archeologists digging near the Gulf Coast of Mexico have discovered an inscribed seal and fragments of a plaque which contain writing, pushing back the date for the first appearance of writing in Mesoamerica to about 650 BC. It also suggests that the Olmec culture developed writing, not the Zapotecs.
- Pi has been calculated to 1.24 trillion digits. Professor Yasumasa Kanada and nine other researchers at the Information Technology Center at Tokyo University have set the new world record.
- Today is the Islamic festival of Eid ul-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan for Muslims worldwide.
- United Airlines, the world's second-biggest carrier, appears headed for the largest bankruptcy filing in airline industry history. The company's efforts to avoid a Chapter 11 filing apparently ended Wednesday when a government board rejected its bid for $1.8 billion in federal loan guarantees.
- The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Harvard mouse, designed for its usefulness in cancer research, is not patentable. In its view such a higher life form does not fall within the definition of invention.
- At Arusha, Tanzania, President Pierre Buyoya of Burundi and Pierre Nkurunziza, leader of the Hutu insurgents Forces for the Defense of Democracy (FDD), signed a cease-fire accord. The goal is to end a nine-year civil war.
- Football (soccer): Real Madrid has defeated Olimpia Paraguay to win the Intercontinental Cup.
- Today is World AIDS Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness of the global AIDS epidemic caused by the spread of HIV infection.
Past events:
News pages
External links to news pages that can be used to gather new topics for the above list:
- News Search Engines: http://www.HavenWorks.com/news/search
- Google News
- http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ts/
- http://news.bbc.co.uk - Coverage split in to science/health etc... for UK and international news
- http://www.cnn.com.
- News Sources
- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)