• The Police Service of Northern Ireland confirm that the haul in last Monday's Northern Bank Belfast bank heist was £22 million, comprising £1.15 million in new Northern Bank £100 and £50 notes, £12 million in new Northern Bank £20 and £10 notes, £5 million in used Northern Ireland notes issued by various banks, and the remainder in other Sterling banknotes. It is envisaged that the gang may have difficulty in laundering most of their haul, as Northern Irish notes are rarely seen outside Northern Ireland. Scotsman)
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
  • The Israeli Army has denied a claim by a group called 'Physicians for Human Rights' that they were firing at a Khan Yunis hospital. (Ha'Aretz)
  • British prime minister Tony Blair visits Israel for discussions with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon about reviving the peace process. The two discuss the Road Map for Peace and Israel's disengagement plan. Blair said that Palestinian must stop terror as a condition to return for the Road Map. (Yahoo/Reuters) , (BBC)
  • An Israeli civil security guard who guarded bulldozers used for building the Israeli West Bank barrier was killed in a shooting attack by two Palestinians. (Haaretz)
  • IDF forces re-enter Khan Yunis after at least 15 rockets and mortar shells hit Israeli settlements. Israeli forces kill either one or three armed Palestinians in Khan Yunis, and according to Palestinians, demolish seven houses. (Haaretz), (Reuters)
  • Israeli politician Shimon Peres warns against trusting Hamas to honor a future ceasefire. (Yahoo\AFP)
  • Gush Katif residents hold protests against the disengagement plan and the lack of action against mortar shellings on the settlement in the last week. Some of them wear an orange Star of David, similar to the yellow badge which Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust. Many politicians and heads of Jewish organizations, including the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, ask them to stop wearing the star as they believe it trivializes the Nazi genocide. (BBC)
• The British charity organization Save the children UK withdraws from Darfur after rebels kill their aid workers. (BBC) (IAfrica) (AllAfrica)
• The Indian election commission investigates railways minister Laloo Prasad for allegations of electoral bribery. He had given money to dalit women in public. (ExpressIndia) (BBC)
• A Pakistani court restores bail for Asif Ali Zardari. (BBC) (GEO)
• In Mozambique, the national election commission declares Armando Guebuza, presidential candidate of ruling party Frelimo, the winner of the election. He received 64% of the vote despite alleged irregularities. (AllAfrica) (Afrol) (BBC)
• In the Philippines, the funeral of Fernando Poe, Jr, movie star and presidential candidate, attracts large numbers of supporters. Security is high due to rumors of potential anti-government revolt. The detained ex-president Joseph Estrada condemns incumbent president Gloria Arroyo in his eulogy. (Reuters) (Philippine Daily Inquirer)

• The European Union ministers postpones a controversial vote on the proposed Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions in the EU after Poland asked more time to think about it. (Reuters)(BBC)
• The Boeing Delta 4 Heavy rocket launches successfully for the first time. (MSNBC)
• Conflict in Iraq:
  • US forces say twenty-four people have been killed and at least 60 injured in an attack at a US military base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The dead include 19 US Soliders, making the attack the deadliest single attack on US forces since the start of the war.(BBC)
  • Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, the two French hostages held in Iraq since August have been freed. Their captors claim they were freed because of France's anti-war stance. (BBC)
• Former British Home Secretary David Blunkett's office is found to have assisted in the fast-tracking of his lover's nanny's visa-application, thereby confirming the allegation that led to his dismissal. (BBC)
• The White House announces that allegations of abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay by US military personnel will be "fully investigated". The allegations were prompted by a memo, obtained by ACLU FOIA requests, dated two months after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke which reference an executive order that authorized questionable interrogation techniques. The White House spokesman flat out denied this in saying "there is no executive order on interrogation techniques". (BBC) (White House) (ACLU)
• Japan issues a tourist visa to former Taiwanese leader Lee Teng-hui despite protests from the People's Republic of China that such a move would harm bilateral relations. The PRC considers Lee a Taiwan independence agitator. (BBC)
• Same-sex marriage in Canada: The Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador finds the banning of same-sex marriage unconstitutional, making that province the eighth of Canada's provinces and territories to legalize same-sex marriage. (CBC)
• Arab-Israeli Conflict: The leaders of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) have urged US President George W Bush to make the creation of an independent Palestinian state an absolute priority at their annual meeting, which is being held in Bahrain. (BBC)
• UK Prime Minister Tony Blair makes a surprise visit to Baghdad. (BBC) (Guardian) (Number 10)
• Author J.K. Rowling announces that the sixth book in her Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, will be published on 16 July 2005. The share price of her British publisher, Bloomsbury, increased by 7.5% on the news. (Reuters)
• Up to thirty million pounds are reported stolen from the headquarters of the Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Two members of the bank's senior staff and their families are reported to have been held hostage before the robbery. This is likely to be the second biggest bank robbery in British history, and the fourth largest in the world. (BBC) (Reuters) (Glasgow Evening Times)
• Pakistan's Anti Terrorism Court cancels the bail of Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistan People's Party and husband of Benazir Bhutto. Zardari was released last month after eight years in prison. He was charged with corruption and conspiracy to murder. (GEO) (BBC)
• A court in Chile upholds the indictment and house arrest of Augusto Pinochet. Prosecution lawyers claim that his hospitalization for a heart condition was a political ploy. Pinochet's lawyers intend to appeal. (BBC) (Bloomberg)
• A court in Nigeria upholds the election of Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo. Opposition parties, led by Muhammadu Buhari, had challenged the result, and the EU and US question the election's validity. (AllAfrica) (BBC) (Vanguard, Nigeria)
• A bus accident in Peru claims 49 lives and injures 15. (Reuters)
• Archaeologists in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, have found the remains of a 7,500-year-old man on the island of Marawah. (Khaleej Times) (Reuters)
• French President Jacques Chirac has demanded improved hospital security after two nurses are killed. A suspected mental patient was released. (Reuters Alertnet)
• The US government has decided to settle a suit in which Hungarian Jews have demanded compensation for a train full of valuables the US Army took at the end of World War II. (Wired News) (New York Post)
• The USA pressures Iceland not to grant Bobby Fischer sanctuary. (Reuters)
• Zahira Sheikh, key witness in the Best Bakery case, is declared hostile by the prosecution after she went back on her police statement during retrial of the case. (Times of India) (Indian Express)

• Analysts attribute a sharp drop in the price of crude oil to the unexpected outcome of the auction of Yukos' Siberian production unit yesterday. The value of the January futures contract fell 64 cents to $45.64 on the Nymex.
• China announces reforms to its legal system effective in 2005, including the introduction of jury trials and a 10% increase in the number of judges. Jurors will be elected to a five-year term, and must have at least two years' university education. (BBC) (Xinhua)
• The Head of the Egyptian Coptic Christian Church, Pope Shenouda III, has gone into seclusion in a desert monastery to draw attention to grievances among Egyptian Christians. (BBC)
• U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has admitted that he had used a machine to sign letters of condolence to relatives of more than 1,000 troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but pledged to sign the letters personally in future. (BBC)
• In Sudan, fighting has not stopped after a ceasefire between government troops and rebels. Although the government of Sudan has said that they have stopped the Darfur offensive, there are still reports of battles. Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail rules out any withdrawal from the positions government troops have taken. An observing African Union helicopter was shot at. (BBC)(Iafrica)
• Prachanda, leader of the Maoist guerillas in Nepal, announces his intention to disrupt elections if the government refuses to abolish the monarchy. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has given them until January 13, 2005 to begin peace talks. (Reuters)
• An explosion in a Chinese coal mine kills 14. (Reuters)(BBC)
• Rice University computer scientists find a security hole in Google's desktop search program. (New York Times)
• African National Congress of South Africa accuses U.S. officials covering up adverse side effects of AIDS medications. (Iafrica) (Reuters)
• Police arrest former Miss World Yukta Mookhey's uncle, aunt and two cousins in a case of harassment for dowry. (Hindustan Times) (Indian Express) (Times of India)
• Rumaisa Rahman, the smallest baby ever to be born according to medical records, and her twin sister Hiba, are announced to have been born in a Chicago hospital.(AOL)

• Conflict in Iraq: Bomb blasts in the Iraqi Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf kill up to 60 people and injure a further 120. (BBC)
• Russia auctions off the main production unit of oil giant YUKOS to the small Baikalfinansgroup for 260.75bn roubles (US$9.37bn). Before the sale, YUKOS was said to owe US$27bn in unpaid taxes, specifically an average of 90% of its revenue. Former CEO jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other YUKOS officials maintain it is politically motivated. (BBC)
• The people of Turkmenistan go to the polls to elect a new parliament. Voters will choose between candidates, all of whom have pledged support to President Niyazov, the Turkmenbashi (or leader of Turkmens). (BBC)
• US president George W Bush is named "Person of the Year" by TIME magazine. (CNN)
• Suprnova.org, the largest BitTorrent community on the Internet, voluntarily shuts down its service permanently after twos years of operation.

• Hundreds of Sikh demonstrators protest outside a Birmingham, England theatre against a play depicting sex abuse and murder in a Sikh temple. Theatre stormed by a few demonstrators. (BBC)
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy:
  • Voting machine manufacturer Diebold will pay a $2.6 million settlement to the State of California over the lawsuit filed by the state in September alleging that Diebold was not truthful about the security and reliability of its electronic voting machines. (internetnews.com)
  • In a sharp change from their traditional role, several members of the U.S. Electoral College have filed a protest of the official election results, one even casting his electoral vote "provisionally" upon a revote. These electors have called for a member of the U.S. Senate to protest the election results on January 6th. (AP) (Sacramento Bee) (Burlington Union)
• In Topeka, Kansas, USA, infant Victoria Jo Stinnett is returned to her father three days after her mother was allegedly strangled to death and she was cut from her mother's uterus and abducted. The AMBER Alert system is credited with helping to safely recover the child. (CNN)
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Palestinians fire several Qassam rockets at the civilian town Sderot and the northern Negev, causing damage but no casualties. (Haaretz)
  • Another three Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers on Saturday during an Israeli incursion into the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, raising the death toll to 11. According to Palestinian sources, three of those killed were civilians, the rest were militants from Hamas and Fatah's Abu Reish Brigades. The IDF has officialy ended Khan Yunis raid, dubbed "Operation Orange Iron", and threatened to return if mortar shelling will be renewed by militants. (BBC) , (Haaretz)
  • Palestinians have been unable to bury the dead because Israeli forces were in control at the local cemetery, medics told the Reuters news agency. (BBC)
  • Six Palestinians were rescued from a collapsed tunnel under an Israel-controlled corridor in the Egypt-Gaza border area. (BBC)
• Former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet has been taken to hospital after suffering a stroke. (BBC)
• Darfur conflict: The African Union has given both sides involved in the Darfur conflict a deadline of 1700 GMT to halt the fighting in the region which currently violates the ceasefire agreement. If this wasn't met talks in Nigeria to find a solution to the conflict would end. (BBC)
• Conflict in Iraq:
  • Former senior Iraqi official Ali Hassan al-Majid (aka "Chemical Ali") is questioned by Iraqi judges in a pre-trial hearing. He is accused of crimes committed by the regime, such as the gassing of Iraqi Kurds in 1988. (BBC) (Reuters)
  • Iraqi insurgents attack election offices in northern Iraq, killing two people and wounding nine, six weeks before the country is due to go to the polls. (Reuters)

• United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld faces criticism from both Democrats and Republicans following a dismissive reply to a soldier in Iraq when questioned about vehicle armor. (CNN)
• Cuban authorities put up photos of abused Iraqi prisoners in front of the US interests section in Havana after the US displayed Christmas decorations in a protest against Cuba's human rights record. (BBC)
• The United States declares Hizbullah's al-Manar TV channel to be a terrorist organization. (White House Official Statement) (Al-Jazeera)
• A public inquiry into the deaths of 85 Muslim protesters in southern Thailand claims the killings were "not deliberate". 78 people suffocated to death after being piled into army trucks by Thai security forces; 7 were shot at the separatist protests on October 25. (BBC)
• U.S. President George W. Bush signs the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, creating the office of the Director of National Intelligence to oversee the country's fifteen spy agencies. (ABC News)
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
  • The Israeli Labor party and Ariel Sharon's Likud Party reach an agreement, forming a unity government in order to implement Israel's unilateral disengagement plan of 2004. In return, the Labor will receive eight cabinet portfolios, including "peace/disengagement minister" specially suited for Shimon Peres and Internal Affairs. (Yahoo/Reuters) (BBC)
  • Israeli forces, accompanied by armored bulldozers and helicopter gunships, raid the Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis, killing 8 Palestinians, including 2 civilians, and wounding 24, after 50 mortar shells were fired on the Gush Katif settlements and caused injuries to some Israeli Soldiers and killed a Thai worker. (BBC) (Maariv) (Haaretz)
  • In retaliation for the Israeli raid, Palestinians from Hamas and the Abu-Reish faction shoot at least five anti-tank missiles, wounding two Israeli soldiers. (BBC) (Haaretz) (Maariv) (CTV Canada)
  • Hundreds of Palestinians flee homes in the area, fearful that Israeli troops will destroy their homes. They take refuge in nearby hospital and a stadium, while others have moved to relatives who live further to the centre of the Gaza Strip. (BBC) (Haaretz)
  • In Rafah, five Palestinians are trapped when the tunnel they were digging collapsed. Rescue efforts, with the assist of Israeli bulldozers, are in progress though estimations are that the five are dead. (Haaretz) (Yahoo\Reuters)
• U.S. President George W. Bush, speaking to business executives and economists at the White House, vows to push through big reforms to the Social Security program, including partial privatization of the state pension fund, during his second term. (BBC)
• The E.U. states that Turkey must recognize the ethnic-Greek government of E.U. member state Cyprus before it can begin negotiations for E.U. membership. Currently Turkey is the only country that recognizes the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. (ITV) (Turkish Press)
• Police in West Java, Indonesia, say that they have found nine home-made bombs on a bus during a security operation. (Channel News Asia)(Jakarta Post)
• Three suspected IRA members who were accused of training rebels in Colombia flee while on bail. An appellate court overturned their earlier acquittals yesterday. They had been sentenced to prison for 17 years. (BBC) (Ireland Online)
• Bhutan's ban on the sale of all tobacco products comes into effect. (Hindustan Times) (BBC)
• Russia intends to allow Polish officials to see files related to the Katyn massacre. (BBC)
• The United Nations finds a surveillance bug in its European headquarters in Geneva in a room used by ministers from major powers last year during private talks on Iraq. (BBC) (NZZ)

• Belgian child killer Marc Dutroux loses an appeal against his life sentence . (Expatica)(News.Com)
• Leaders of the European Union, meeting in Brussels, agree to invite Turkey to begin negotiations to join the EU from 3 October 2005, about 36 years after they first applied to join. (BBC)
• In the Western Districts of Nepal, nearly 50 people are killed in clashes between Nepalese troops and Maoist rebels. (BBC)
• A commuter in Zimbabwe who allegedly insulted President Robert Mugabe could face up to five years in prison for undermining the president's authority. (BBC)
• Inuit leaders want to sue the U.S. government at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for causing global warming. They view the melting of the polar icecap in the Arctic as a threat to their existence as a people, an assault on their basic human rights. The announcement is expected today in Buenos Aires at the 10th round of international talks on climate change. (NYT) (Democracy Now!)
• The British final court of appeal, the Law Lords, rule that the suspension of habeas corpus for foreign nationals detained under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 is illegal, being incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. (BBC) (judgment)
• Cambodian soldiers discover a cache of Angkor Wat-era carvings that were to be smuggled out of the country. (Reuters)
• Thai security forces pursue 100 people connected to the unrest in the south of the country. Four Islamic teachers have been arrested on suspicion of inciting terrorism. (Channel News Asia) (Reuters)
• Former chess champion Bobby Fischer has been offered residency in Iceland. He is currently detained in Japan, and is wanted by the United States. (BBC)(Reuters)

• CNN's business news network CNNfn ends transmissions. (CNN)
• U.K. Home Secretary David Blunkett resigns from his post in the wake of numerous controversies. He is replaced by Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills. Ruth Kelly takes over from Clarke as Education Secretary and becomes the sixth woman in prime minister Tony Blair's Cabinet. Kelly is replaced as Cabinet Office minister by David Miliband. (Sky) (BBC)
• In Athens, Greece, two gunmen, possibly Albanian, seize a bus at 7:00 local time and take 25 hostages on board. The hijackers threaten to blow up the bus at 08:00 Greek time (06:00 GMT, Thursday) if their demands for €1 million and a flight to Russia are not met. The hostage crisis ends peacefully after 18 hours when the two gunmen surrender. All the hostages are released unharmed. (Sky)(News24) (OfficialWire)(Reuters)
• An armed group of young ethnic Albanians, allegedly former NLA guerrilla members, seal off the village of Kondovo, Macedonia, a suburb of the capital Skopje, citing poor conditions and repression by state authorities. The fledgling multi-ethnic governing coalition plays down the incident stating it is a local problem stemming from the slow implementation of the peace agreement after the 2001 civil war, while some opposition parties call for "strong action". (RealityMK) (TOL)
• Democratic Party members of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary request an FBI investigation into alleged Ohio voting problems, (NYT) (pdf) prompted by affidavits and sworn testimony taken at a congressional forum held on December 13. [1]
• A US$85 million test of the U.S. National Missile Defense system by the Missile Defense Agency is aborted when an unknown anomaly is detected before the launch of an interceptor missile in the Marshall Islands, 16 minutes after the launch of the target from Kodiak Island, Alaska. It is the first test since a previous failed test in 2002. As in 2002, the Bush administration abandons plans to activate the system by the end of the year, and projects its activation in early 2005. (Reuters) (Associated Press)
• Sprint Corporation announces a US$35 billion deal to acquire Nextel Communications. With about $40 billion in combined yearly revenue the resulting company (called Sprint Nextel) will be the the third largest wireless telephone service provider in the US. (MSNBC)
• Human rights in Iraq: The US is forced to release evidence which shows prisoners in Iraq were subject to mock executions, electric shocks, and burns by US Marines. (BBC)
• Iraqi transitional parliamentary election: Iraq's defense minister accuses Iran and Syria of supporting terrorists and charges that a senior Iraqi Shiite was leading a "pro-Iranian" coalition into next month's national elections. (AP via Yahoo)
• North Korea announces that if Japan is to impose any sanctions over the ashes of kidnap victim Yokota Megumi, it will be regarded as a declaration of war. (Japan Today) The Japanese government downplays the criticism. (News24)(Bloomberg) (Japan Today)
• At least five people die in a second Indian train accident, blamed on negligence by railway officials. The new accident comes after the previous day's train crash with an eventual death toll of 37. (Times of India) (Reuters) (News24)
• United Nations envoy Jan Pronk says that 10,000 peacekeepers are needed in Sudan to monitor the forthcoming peace deal. (Reuters Alertnet)
• Pitcairn Islands election, 2004: Jay Warren becomes Mayor of Pitcairn Island.

• Same-sex marriage in Canada: Federal justice minister Irwin Cotler announces that the bill to legalize same-sex marriage will contain a provision allowing civic officials to refuse to perform such ceremonies. (365Gay)
• Nick Griffin and John Tyndall, the current and previous leaders of the far-right British National Party, are arrested and bailed in relation to investigations by British police into suspicion of incitement to racial hatred. (BBC)
• Bahrain, the smallest Persian Gulf nation, unfurls the world's largest national flag at a sports stadium car park. (BBC)
• Arab-Israeli Conflict:
  • A Thai worker is killed and two more are injured in Gush Katif by Palestinian mortar shells. (Haaretz)
  • The Syrian government blames Israel for a failed attempt to kill an alleged senior Hamas member in Damascus yesterday. (BBC)
  • The leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, tells the BBC's Newsnight programme that his group has had secret contacts with the United States and the European Union. (BBC)
  • Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas calls for an end to violence in the 4-year old intifada and a return to non-violent resistance. The announcement comes two days after a faction of Abbas's Fatah party, Fatah Hawks, claims responsibility for an attack killing at least 5 Israeli soldiers. (Reuters)
• Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian resigns as Chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party to take responsibility for the pan-green alliance's failure to win a majority in the legislative election. (BBC)
• Two trains collide in the northern Indian state of Punjab, killing at least 50 people. One of the trains was carrying Hindu pilgrims returning from Vaishno Devi. (BBC)(The Times-UK)
• The US admits that more prisoners have died in American custody in Afghanistan than it has previously acknowledged. (BBC)
• Another car bomb detonates inside the Green Zone of Baghdad. Iraqi doctors claim at least 7 deaths and 12 injuries. (BBC) (News24)
• President Chirac inaugurates the world's highest road bridge in southern France. The Millau Viaduct over the River Tarn is higher than the Eiffel Tower. It is expected to open to traffic on Thursday. (BBC)
• A new species of monkey, the Arunachal Macaque, is discovered in India. It is the first new macaque discovered since 1903 and the first new primate in 49 years. (NCF India)

• Self-confessed cannibal Yoo Young-Chul, convicted of killing 20 people, mostly prostitutes, is sentenced to death in Seoul, South Korea. (Xinhua)
• France's highest administrative court, the Conseil d'État, bans Hizbullah's al-Manar TV station on the grounds that it incites racial hatred and antisemitism. (BBC)
• The jury in the Scott Peterson trial recommends that he be sentenced to death for the murder of his wife and unborn son. (CNN)
• Augusto Pinochet is charged by Chilean prosecutors for alleged involvement in murder and "disappearances" in Chile in the 1970s, and is placed under house arrest. (BBC)
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy:
  • As required by the United States Constitution, Members of the United States Electoral College meet in all 50 state capitols and the District of Columbia to cast their electoral votes, including an unexpected single vote for John Edwards by an elector in Minnesota. (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
  • All members of the Ohio delegation of the Electoral College cast their ballots for George W. Bush while a legal recount is still ongoing, after a written request by 11 Democratic congressmen (pdf) to suspend voting. (ABC) (ABC)
  • The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary hears testimony at a forum in Colombus, Ohio regarding problems with the 2004 presidential election. (freepress.org) (statements) (audio, mp3) (video, wmv)
• United States Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael O. Leavitt is nominated by President George W. Bush to succeed outgoing Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson in the Cabinet-level post. (Bloomberg)
• Conflict in Iraq:
  • At least 13 people die following a car bomb attack on a U.S. checkpoint near the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq. (The Guardian)
  • The U.S. launches another air raid on the Iraqi city of Fallujah after eight US Marines were killed by insurgents over the weekend. (ABC {aus})
• Foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration: Human Rights Watch, a New York based NGO claims that another three prisoners have died while in U.S. detention in Afghanistan. (BBC)
• Hundreds of protesters have gathered in Cairo outside Egypt's Supreme Judiciary buildings, defying a ban on public protests, to call for an end to Hosni Mubarak's 23-year presidency of Egypt. (BBC)
• Romanian presidential election, 2004: Prime Minister Adrian Năstase concedes defeat to opposition candidate Traian Băsescu after a close contest. With 99% of the vote counted, Băsescu took 51.23% of the vote to Năstase's 48.77%. (BBC)
• Oracle Corporation announces a merger deal to acquire PeopleSoft for approximately US$10.3 billion. (Oracle Press Release)

• According to the Washington Post the Bush administration used wire taps to intercept a number of phone conversations of Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency in hope of finding information that would help remove ElBaradei from his post. (CNN) (The Washington Post)
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
  • At least 5 Israeli soldiers are killed and 10 are injured as a tunnel rigged with 1500 kg of explosives exploded near the Rafah crossing between Rafah and Egypt. Hamas and an al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades' offshoot called "Fatah Hawk" claimed joint responsibility. (Haaretz) (CNN)
  • 5 Palestinian schoolchildren were wounded, recieving shrapnel wounds from Israeli Tank Fire. (Ha'Aretz)
• Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti withdraws his nomination in the Palestinian presidential election just ten days after announcing his candidacy, and instead endorses Fatah candidate Mahmoud Abbas. (BBC)
• Romania presidential run-off: Exit-polls show that the difference between the two candidates (Traian Băsescu and Adrian Năstase) is very small, estimated at less than 0.01%. (BBC)
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy:
  • The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary will be holding a congressional forum in Columbus concerning new evidence of election irregularities and fraud in Ohio, the issue of Ohio electors meeting while recounts and litigation are pending, and to discuss legislative and other responses to the problems, on Dec. 13. (pdf)
  • The Civil Rights Coalition schedules a protest for Dec. 18, demanding a re-vote in "areas where substantive disenfranchisement took place" and the prosecution of officials involved in "election fraud." (Civil Rights Coalition)
• A bomb blast in a General Santos City, Philippines, supermarket leaves at least 58 people injured and 15 dead.(AOL news)

• M.S. Subbulakshmi, one of the most popular Carnatic vocalists in Indian history, passes away from complications arising from pneumonia. In her lifetime, she earned the Ramon Magsaysay award and was the first musician to earn the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award. (The Daily Star)
• Jean-Christophe Lafaille, a French climber, climbed Shishapangma, the first solo ascension of a eight-thousander in winter from a new route in the South face.
• Vanuatu Prime Minister Serge Vohor is ousted in a vote of no-confidence and replaced by Ham Lini. Vohor had fallen out of favor with his cabinet after he unilaterally travelled to Taipei and established diplomatic relations with the Taiwan. The Vanuatu Council of Ministers voted to void the decision and continue relations with the People's Republic of China. (Reuters) (CRI)
• The opposition pan-blue alliance achieves a majority in the Taiwanese legislative election, garnering at least 114 of the 225 seats. The governing Democratic Progressive Party and its pan-green allies win 101 seats. (BBC) (Guardian: AP) (China Post)
• Doctors in Austria confirm that Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko's illness was caused by dioxin poisoning. It is alleged that he first became ill after dining with the chairman of the Ukrainian Security Service in early September. (BBC) (Yahoo News)
• Bernard Kerik withdraws his nomination for the post of Secretary of Homeland Security, fearing a scandal over the immigration status of his nanny. (Newsday) (Bloomberg)

• Israeli troops kill Rania Siam, an 8-year-old Palestinian girl, as she eats lunch in the kitchen of her home in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip. Earlier, three mortar shells are fired into the nearby Israeli settlement of Neve Dekalim injuring four people, one of them a child. Hamas claims responsibility. Israeli troops fire in the general direction the source of mortar fire. The Israeli army says it will investigate Rania Siam's death. (NYT)
• A riot forms in Puerto Rico between members of the PIP, the FUPI, the Socialist party and members of the police in front of the federal court business, where PIP and PNP backers had shown two days before the outcome of the 2004 Puerto Rican elections are decided by a judge. Several people, including seven policemen, are severely injured. (El Vocero, in Spanish)
• Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is acquitted of bribery thanks to the statute of limitations. The court's ruling implied that Berlusconi probably was guilty of bribing a judge in 1991, but said that too much time had passed for him to be punished. Financial Times Reuters
• The 2004 Nobel Prizes are handed out at twin ceremonies in Oslo and Stockholm. (Canadian Press) (BBC)
• "Godfather of Soul" James Brown is diagnosed with prostate cancer and will undergo surgery next week. (BBC)
• A bomb explodes at a market in the Pakistani city of Quetta, leaving at least ten people dead. (BBC)
• The Inter-American Court of Human Rights orders Guatemala to pay USD $7.9 million in compensation to 317 survivors of the 1982 Plan de Sánchez massacre in which soldiers and paramilitaries killed 268 villagers. (Reuters)
• Austrian Interior Minister Ernst Strasser resigns. (Der Standard)
• An explosion at a Chinese coal mine in Shaanxi province claims 33 lives. (IOL) (ChannelNewsAsia) (SwissInfo)
• President of Ghana John Kufuor is re-elected to his second term in office. (GhanaWeb) (Reuters)
• A Malaysian freighter is spilling oil in the Aleutians. Weather is hampering rescue and clean-up efforts. A rescue helicopter sent Wednesday to rescue the crew crashed. (Reuters) (Seattle Times)
• Princess Cristina of Spain is reported to be pregnant for the fourth time. (Reuters) (SwissInfo)
• Camp X-Ray Prisoner Controversy: "Australian Taleban" David Hicks, held at the US military camp in Guantánamo Bay, says he has been beaten, kicked, handcuffed and blindfolded, his head slammed into concrete, forced to run in leg shackles, routinely deprived of sleep and offered the services of a prostitute by US troops. (BBC)
• Conflict in Iraq: Cpl Wassef Ali Hassoun, a U.S. Marine who turned up in Lebanon after disappearing from Iraq, is charged with desertion. (BBC)

• President George W. Bush nominates Jim Nicholson, U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, as his nominee for Veterans Affairs Secretary replacing out going secretary Anthony Principi.
• Police discover four packages of suspected explosives at the Taipei main railway station shortly before the legislative election is to take place. (Reuters)
• Japan and Germany have jointly declared they want permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council with the veto power of the five current permanent members.(VOA)
• The British Law Lords hold treatment of Czech Roma by UK immigration officers at Prague airport to be discriminatory. (opinions) Since the enlargement of the European Union earlier this year, free movement of EU citizens includes Czechs. (Guardian) (BBC)
• Lord Dubs presents the Succession to the Crown Bill (bill) in the United Kingdom Parliament. (Guardian)
• Acting on a reference from Parliament, the Canadian Supreme Court states that a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Canada would be constitutional. They decline to say if the Constitution requires that recognition, saying that by not appealing several provincial courts' decisions to that effect, the government has already adopted that position. (CBC) Prime Minister Paul Martin says his government will introduce same-sex marriage legislation in January. (CBC)
• In a move denounced as "unconstitutional" by the opposition, Ecuador's Congress dismisses all 31 of the country's supreme court justices. (BBC)
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
  • Israeli troops kill at least four Palestinians found crawling into Egypt on the Gaza Border. (China View) (Haaretz)
  • Palestinian presidential candidate Mustafa Barghouti claims to have been "detained and beaten" by Israeli soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint. (BBC)
• The government of Lesotho announces plans to give women legal equality and property rights within a year. (Reuters)
• The International Rescue Committee says that the Congo Civil War is killing 1000 people a day and calls the international response "abysmal". (BBC)
• Former Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell and another member of his new band, Damageplan, are shot and killed during a live performance in Columbus, Ohio, USA. Police shoot and kill the gunman. (NBC)

• Delegates from twelve South American countries meeting in Cuzco, Peru, sign a deal creating the South American Community of Nations, a bloc modelled on the European Union. (BBC)
• The Israeli government indicates that it will recognize same-sex partnerships for certain benefits, and will introduce legislation formalizing this status. (365gay.com)
• Civil unions in New Zealand: Parliament passes civil union legislation by 65 votes to 55. The new law provides a way for de facto couples, including same-sex couples, to gain legal recognition of their relationships, but stops short of same-sex marriage. (Scoop) (TVNZ)
• The White House affirms that, despite reports to the contrary, John Snow will remain Treasury Secretary during President George W. Bush's second term of office. Meanwhile, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi announces his expected resignation. (CNN)
• The United States Senate follows the U.S. House of Representatives in approving a complete overhaul of government intelligence services, creating the post of United States Director of National Intelligence. (BBC)
• The European Union says it is not ready to lift its 15-year-old arms embargo on the People's Republic of China, set after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. (BBC)
• Malaysian Deputy Home Affairs Minister Tan Chai Ho announces that once an extended amnesty sought by Indonesia comes to an end later this year, illegal immigrants will face up to 5 years in prison and a whipping; their employers will also be punished. More than 18,000 undocumented migrants have already been whipped since the 2002 amendment to the Malaysian Immigration Act. (China View) (Channel News Asia)
• IBM announces that it will sell its PC hardware business to Lenovo, a Chinese computer company. (BBC)
• Seer Jayendra Saraswathi, a senior Hindu cleric, has been denied bail over his murder charge in India's southern Tamil Nadu state. (BBC)
• The Times reports that Dr. Nikolai Korpan, who treated Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in Vienna, announced Yushchenko had been poisoned, and that the specific poison would be identified within days, but later denied the report, saying he had been cited wrongly and that it would be hard to gain hard evidence for a poisoning. (Times Online) (Yahoo News)

• The United States Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of state laws that block merchants from shipping wine across state lines. Affected businesses and consumers claim that such laws are invalid under the commerce clause, long held to ban a state's discrimination against interstate commerce.
• Frans van Anraat is arrested in the Netherlands for shipping chemical weapons precursors to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War (CNN)
• High profile Democratic New York State attorney general Eliot Spitzer announces his campaign for Governor in 2006. (Yahoo)
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Two Hamas militants, two Islamic Jihad members and an Israeli soldier have died following clashes in the central Gaza Strip. (BBC)
  • Shahar Dvir-Zeliger, a Jewish settler in Nablus, has been sentenced to eight years imprisonment for membership of an extremist group. He was found guilty of being a member of the Bat Ayin cell, which has killed eight Palestinians. (BBC)
  • An entire Israeli Army elite unit has been suspended from duty while investigations continue into what B'Tselem alleges was a killing of an unnarmed injuried Palestinian man. (BBC)
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy:
  • In a sworn affidavit Monday, a former programmer for a NASA contractor said that he developed a vote-rigging prototype at the request of a then-Florida state representative, Tom Feeney, who is now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. (Blue Lemur)(bradblog)
  • Ohio Secretary of State, and Co-Chair of the George Bush Ohio Campaign, Ken Blackwell certifies election results. Two parallel vote count efforts are pending, one claims evidence that John Kerry is the legitimate winner of Ohio. (Associated Press) (NYT)
• The U.S. military discusses plans for mandatory visibly worn ID badges, forced labor, DNA testing, and retina scans at "citizen processing centers" for all residents of the rebellious Iraqi city of Fallujah, saying they plan to make it a model city for the whole of Iraq. (Boston Globe)
• Hamid Karzai is inaugurated as President of Afghanistan. (CNN) (BBC)

• Former Houston Rockets star Calvin Murphy acquitted of charges that he molested his five daughters. (Houston Chronicle)
• Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams recommends that Sinn Féin support a British-Irish power-sharing plan for Northern Ireland that involves the public decommissioning of the arms held by the Irish Republican Army. Ian Paisley of the loyalist Democratic Unionist Party may become first minister of Northern Ireland, with former IRA member Martin McGuinness as his deputy. (BBC)
• United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has come under fire after reports claim that his son received payments from a Swiss company that won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil for Food program. (BBC)
• The U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is car bombed and then stormed by gunmen, killing nine Saudis. Saudi security forces kill three of the gunmen, arrest two others, and are in pursuit of several more. There are no U.S. casualties. (BBC) (Reuters/AFP)
• In Spain the Basque separatist group ETA detonate seven bombs in bars, cafes and town squares across the country. The cities attacked are León, Ávila, Santillana del Mar, Ciudad Real, Málaga, Valladolid, and Alicante. All the attacks were preceded by warnings and nobody was seriously hurt. (BBC)
• Ukrainian presidential election controversy: EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has returned to Ukraine for talks on the country's political crisis.(BBC)

• In Taiwan, rallies are held in support of candidates in this week's elections to the Legislative Yuan (parliament). Party sources estimate that separate rallies held in Taipei by the Kuomintang and Taiwan Solidarity Union drew around 100,000 each. (VOA) (TaipeiTimes)
• A referendum in Hungary to grant citizenship to ethnic Hungarians living in other countries appears to have failed due to insufficient turnout. The proposal has angered the governments of countries with significant Hungarian populations, particularly Romania. The Prime Minister of Hungary, Ferenc Gyurcsány, opposed the referendum. (Reuters)
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy:
  • Hundreds gather at the Ohio statehouse to demand a recount of votes, citing fraud that took votes from John Kerry and gave them to George W. Bush. (AP)
  • A lawsuit challenging the Volusia County, Florida election is thrown out for being a day late. The suit claims paperwork is missing from 59 of Volusia's 179 precincts and that precinct printouts show different numbers. (AP)
• The Thai government drops millions of origami cranes on its restive, predominantly Muslim provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, saying that they are a gesture of goodwill and peace. (Channel News Asia) (BBC)
• Conflict in Iraq:
  • More than 20 are killed and many more injured in a series of attacks on Iraqis working for the United States by Iraqi insurgents today. (ABC)(BBC)(Reuters)
• French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin seeks to ban Hizbullah's TV channel al-Manar from broadcasting in France due to purported anti-Semitic content, most recently involving a commentator speaking of "Zionist attempts to transmit AIDS to Arab countries". al-Manar claims to be anti-Israeli rather than anti-Semitic. (BBC)
• In a prisoner exchange between Israel and Egypt, Egypt releases Azzam Azzam, an Israeli Druze businessman sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by Egypt in 1997 on charges of spying for Israel, while Israel releases 6 Egyptian students who allegedly infiltrated Israel to kidnap soldiers. (Haaretz) (BBC)
• With more than 1000 people dead or missing, devastation in the northern agricultural regions, and damaged infrastructure after Monday's storm and Thursday's Typhoon Nanmadol, Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo suspends logging and pledges to prosecute violators. (Malaysia Star)(Boston Globe) (New York Times)

• The Mozambique presidential election vote count continues in all of the country, with Frelimo and its candidate Armando Guebuza leading, according to the preliminary results already known, and especially in Maputo, Gaza and Inhambane, traditional regions of influence for the party in power. (Wikinews)
• Militants blow up a vehicle in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, India killing a major, 9 soldiers of the Rashtriya Rifles and 2 civilians using an improvised explosive device. (Reuters)
• Peruvian-born María Julia Mantilla García is crowned Miss World. (Reuters)

• Dragomir Milosevic, the general who besieged Sarajevo for 3 years during the Bosnian Civil War surrenders to the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. 12,000 people died during the siege. (AFP)
• The People's Republic of China launches a new long-range nuclear submarine and an accompanying class of ballistic missiles, with a range in excess of 7,400 km (4,600 miles), developed by the People's Liberation Army. (AP)
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy: The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary schedules a public congressional forum on voting irregularities in Ohio on December 8. (House.gov (PDF))
• Yukos loses an appeal to halt the auctioning off of its main production unit. President of Russia Vladimir Putin, while on his three day visit to India, says Indian firms are welcomed to bid. (BBC)
• Kosovo's parliament elects a former KLA commander, Ramush Haradinaj, who has been questioned twice by UN war crimes investigators. (BBC)
• Conflict in Iraq:
  • A car bomb explodes outside a Shi'a mosque in a Baghdad Sunni district, killing 14 worshippers and wounding 19. Mortars land on a police station in Baghdad, followed by an assault which kills 12 people and results in the freeing of 50 prisoners. A website allegedly tied to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claims responsibility for the police station attack. (BBC) (Reuters)
  • The U.S. Agency for International Development states they aim to boost the availability of electricity throughout Iraq to 18 hours a day by the end of next year from 11 to 15 hours now, estimably higher than before the 2003 U.S. invasion. (Reuters)
  • The Ukrainian parliament, embroiled in the presidential election controversy, votes to ask outgoing president Leonid Kuchma to withdraw Ukraine's 1,600 troops in Iraq. (Reuters)
  • German security forces arrest three alleged members of Ansar al-Islam who are suspected of planning the assassination of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi while he was on a state visit to Germany. (CNN)(Spiegel (German))
• U.S. President George W. Bush nominates former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik to replace outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge in the Cabinet position. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson also announces his resignation. (Reuters)
• Following warnings by separatist group ETA, a number of devices explode in Madrid. (Reuters) (BBC) (Wikinews)
• Ukrainian Supreme Court rules that the 2004 second round presidential results are invalid and requires a new vote to be completed within three weeks without determining whether the second round will be re-run or an entirely new election will be run. (BBC) (Yahoo! News)
• Rwanda denies it has sent any troops to Congo. Reuters quotes unnamed diplomatic sources that claim that the troops were there only temporarily. (BBC) (Reuters)
• Brazilian paleontologists of the University of Rio de Janeiro announce a find of a new dinosaur species, Unaysaurus tolentinoi. The find also shows links to Europe when both continents were part of Pangaea. (Reuters) (BBC) (News 24)
• Typhoon Nanmadol slams into the island of Luzon in the Philippines, less than a week after tropical depression locally called "Winnie" caused landslides and floods in the region also affected by the earlier typhoons Muifa and Merbok. Floods and landslides by Winnie killed at least 495 persons. More people are expected to be declared missing or dead as typhoon Nanmadol leaves the country later today. (CNN) (Inquirer/GMA7)
• Dissident investors in Disney, including former board member Roy Disney, nephew of the company founder Walt Disney, announced that they won't nominate a slate of alternate directors for the 2005 annual meeting. The announcement is a sign of an easing of tensions at that corporation's board. thestreet.com

• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy: The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary requests Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell to respond to alleged voting irregularities. (House.gov (PDF))
• The Inter-American Court of Human Rights upholds Peru's conviction and continued imprisonment of U.S. citizen Lori Berenson on terrorism charges. (BBC) (AP)
• A spokesman for George W. Bush requests that Myanmar release dissident opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose house arrest was recently extended. (BBC)
• Iran's nuclear program: United Nations inspectors wishing to inspect the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran and Lavizan II in northeastern Tehran lack the legal authority according to United Nations diplomats. (Reuters)
• British Member of Parliament and anti-war activist George Galloway wins his libel case against the Daily Telegraph, which during the invasion of Iraq had published a story suggesting that Galloway had been in the pay of Saddam Hussein. (BBC)
• U.S. President George W. Bush nominates Nebraska Governor Mike Johanns to become the next Secretary of Agriculture. If confirmed by the Senate, Johanns would fill the Cabinet position currently held by resigning Secretary Ann Veneman. (Reuters) (Transcript)
• The life sentence of Mijailo Mijailovic, killer of Swedish minister Anna Lindh, is confirmed by the Swedish Supreme Court (BBC) (Reuters) (Bloomberg)
• The European Union takes over from NATO in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, largely replacing the NATO-led SFOR with a new Eufor. (BBC)
• India announces a new effort to survey and decontaminate the area affected by the December 3, 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster. (BBC)
• Conflict in Iraq: The U.S. military, citing security concerns for the Iraqi transitional parliamentary election scheduled for January 30, 2005, announces the deployment of 1,500 additional troops to Iraq and tour extensions bringing the number to an all time high of 150,000. (Reuters) (CNN)

• U.S. TV personality Tom Brokaw ends his career as anchor for NBC Nightly News.
• Palestinian presidential election, 2005: Jailed Palestinian Marwan Barghouti joins the race to succeed Yasser Arafat, bringing the total to 10 candidates, drawing criticism from Arafat's Fatah movement. (Reuters)(BBC)
• AIDS pandemic: The head of Brazil's AIDS program says the government will violate patents on anti-AIDS drugs by copying them, citing unsustainable increases in cost. (BBC)
• Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ends the Likud-led coalition after he fires ministers from the secular Shinui party, which voted to defeat the annual budget over subsidies to religious parties. (Haaretz) (BBC) (Reuters)
• 2004 Ukrainian presidential election: Ukraine's parliament, Verkhovna Rada, passes a vote of no-confidence to dismiss Viktor Yanukovich as Prime Minister. The opposition led by Viktor Yushchenko agrees to continue negotiations and end the blockade of official buildings. (Reuters) (BBC)
• Serbia's interior minister says the "assassination attempt" on president Boris Tadic was a case of road rage against his motor convoy in Belgrade traffic. (Reuters)
• CBS and NBC refuse to air an advertisement by the United Church of Christ citing the advocacy of accepting homosexuals is "too controversial". The advertisement was accepted by numerous other networks including Fox, ABC and TBS. (CNN) (UCC)
• A French appeals court reduces former Prime Minister Alain Juppé's disqualification from holding public office from ten years to one, opening up the way for him to contend in the 2007 presidential election. (BBC)
• Côte d'Ivoire conflict: French officials acknowledge troops killed around 20 people during clashes with anti-French protestors, but maintain the French troops acted in self-defense and gave warning shots, contrary to Ivoirian police claims. (BBC)
• Chinese state media confirms all 166 miners missing after a coal mine explosion in central Shaanxi province on November 28 are dead. (Xinhua) (BBC)
• Rwandan troops are spotted by UN personnel in eastern Congo where Congolese officials say the troops are attacking and burning villages. The last invasion started the Congo Civil War, which resulted in the deaths of 3-4 million people. (Reuters)
• An Indonesian MD-82 from the charter airline Lion Air crashes in Central Java, killing at least 31 people and injuring at least 62 people. (CNN) (Reuters)
• A report commissioned by U.N. Secretary General calls for radical reform of the United Nations, including expansion of the U.N. Security Council. (AP)
• Egypt and Israel hold talks in Jerusalem to discuss the planned Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. (BBC)
• United States President George W. Bush holds talks with Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin in his first official visit to the country and agrees to work together to combat terrorism. (BBC)
• David Blunkett, U.K. Home Secretary, insists that he did no wrong in the controversy surrounding the alleged misuse of his position, and receives the backing of Prime Minister Tony Blair. Sir Alan Budd is appointed to carry out an independent enquiry. (BBC)

2004: January February March April May June July August September October November
2003: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2002: January February March April May June July August September October November December

Logarithmic timeline of current events - most important events of the last ten years on one page.

• Wikipedia:News collections and sources.
• Wikipedia:News sources - This has much of the same material organised in a hierarchical manner to help encourage NPOV in our news reporting.

• WikiNews

• The European Union ministers postpones a controversial vote on the proposed Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions in the EU after Poland asked more time to think about it. (Reuters)(BBC)
• The Boeing Delta 4 Heavy rocket launches successfully for the first time. (MSNBC)
• Conflict in Iraq:
  • US forces say twenty-four people have been killed and at least 60 injured in an attack at a US military base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The dead include 19 US Soliders, making the attack the deadliest single attack on US forces since the start of the war.(BBC)
  • Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, the two French hostages held in Iraq since August have been freed. Their captors claim they were freed because of France's anti-war stance. (BBC)
• Former British Home Secretary David Blunkett's office is found to have assisted in the fast-tracking of his lover's nanny's visa-application, thereby confirming the allegation that led to his dismissal. (BBC)
• The White House announces that allegations of abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay by US military personnel will be "fully investigated". The allegations were prompted by a memo, obtained by ACLU FOIA requests, dated two months after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke which reference an executive order that authorized questionable interrogation techniques. The White House spokesman flat out denied this in saying "there is no executive order on interrogation techniques". (BBC) (White House) (ACLU)
• Japan issues a tourist visa to former Taiwanese leader Lee Teng-hui despite protests from the People's Republic of China that such a move would harm bilateral relations. The PRC considers Lee a Taiwan independence agitator. (BBC)
• Same-sex marriage in Canada: The Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador finds the banning of same-sex marriage unconstitutional, making that province the eighth of Canada's provinces and territories to legalize same-sex marriage. (CBC)
• Arab-Israeli Conflict: The leaders of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) have urged US President George W Bush to make the creation of an independent Palestinian state an absolute priority at their annual meeting, which is being held in Bahrain. (BBC)
• UK Prime Minister Tony Blair makes a surprise visit to Baghdad. (BBC) (Guardian) (Number 10)
• Author J.K. Rowling announces that the sixth book in her Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, will be published on 16 July 2005. The share price of her British publisher, Bloomsbury, increased by 7.5% on the news. (Reuters)
• Up to thirty million pounds are reported stolen from the headquarters of the Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Two members of the bank's senior staff and their families are reported to have been held hostage before the robbery. This is likely to be the second biggest bank robbery in British history, and the fourth largest in the world. (BBC) (Reuters) (Glasgow Evening Times)
• Pakistan's Anti Terrorism Court cancels the bail of Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistan People's Party and husband of Benazir Bhutto. Zardari was released last month after eight years in prison. He was charged with corruption and conspiracy to murder. (GEO) (BBC)
• A court in Chile upholds the indictment and house arrest of Augusto Pinochet. Prosecution lawyers claim that his hospitalization for a heart condition was a political ploy. Pinochet's lawyers intend to appeal. (BBC) (Bloomberg)
• A court in Nigeria upholds the election of Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo. Opposition parties, led by Muhammadu Buhari, had challenged the result, and the EU and US question the election's validity. (AllAfrica) (BBC) (Vanguard, Nigeria)
• A bus accident in Peru claims 49 lives and injures 15. (Reuters)
• Archaeologists in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, have found the remains of a 7,500-year-old man on the island of Marawah. (Khaleej Times) (Reuters)
• French President Jacques Chirac has demanded improved hospital security after two nurses are killed. A suspected mental patient was released. (Reuters Alertnet)
• The US government has decided to settle a suit in which Hungarian Jews have demanded compensation for a train full of valuables the US Army took at the end of World War II. (Wired News) (New York Post)
• The USA pressures Iceland not to grant Bobby Fischer sanctuary. (Reuters)
• Zahira Sheikh, key witness in the Best Bakery case, is declared hostile by the prosecution after she went back on her police statement during retrial of the case. (Times of India) (Indian Express)

• Analysts attribute a sharp drop in the price of crude oil to the unexpected outcome of the auction of Yukos' Siberian production unit yesterday. The value of the January futures contract fell 64 cents to $45.64 on the Nymex.
• China announces reforms to its legal system effective in 2005, including the introduction of jury trials and a 10% increase in the number of judges. Jurors will be elected to a five-year term, and must have at least two years' university education. (BBC) (Xinhua)
• The Head of the Egyptian Coptic Christian Church, Pope Shenouda III, has gone into seclusion in a desert monastery to draw attention to grievances among Egyptian Christians. (BBC)
• U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has admitted that he had used a machine to sign letters of condolence to relatives of more than 1,000 troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but pledged to sign the letters personally in future. (BBC)
• In Sudan, fighting has not stopped after a ceasefire between government troops and rebels. Although the government of Sudan has said that they have stopped the Darfur offensive, there are still reports of battles. Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail rules out any withdrawal from the positions government troops have taken. An observing African Union helicopter was shot at. (BBC)(Iafrica)
• Prachanda, leader of the Maoist guerillas in Nepal, announces his intention to disrupt elections if the government refuses to abolish the monarchy. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has given them until January 13, 2005 to begin peace talks. (Reuters)
• An explosion in a Chinese coal mine kills 14. (Reuters)(BBC)
• Rice University computer scientists find a security hole in Google's desktop search program. (New York Times)
• African National Congress of South Africa accuses U.S. officials covering up adverse side effects of AIDS medications. (Iafrica) (Reuters)
• Police arrest former Miss World Yukta Mookhey's uncle, aunt and two cousins in a case of harassment for dowry. (Hindustan Times) (Indian Express) (Times of India)
• Rumaisa Rahman, the smallest baby ever to be born according to medical records, and her twin sister Hiba, are announced to have been born in a Chicago hospital.(AOL)

• Conflict in Iraq: Bomb blasts in the Iraqi Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf kill up to 60 people and injure a further 120. (BBC)
• Russia auctions off the main production unit of oil giant YUKOS to the small Baikalfinansgroup for 260.75bn roubles (US$9.37bn). Before the sale, YUKOS was said to owe US$27bn in unpaid taxes, specifically an average of 90% of its revenue. Former CEO jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other YUKOS officials maintain it is politically motivated. (BBC)
• The people of Turkmenistan go to the polls to elect a new parliament. Voters will choose between candidates, all of whom have pledged support to President Niyazov, the Turkmenbashi (or leader of Turkmens). (BBC)
• US president George W Bush is named "Person of the Year" by TIME magazine. (CNN)
• Suprnova.org, the largest BitTorrent community on the Internet, voluntarily shuts down its service permanently after twos years of operation.

• Hundreds of Sikh demonstrators protest outside a Birmingham, England theatre against a play depicting sex abuse and murder in a Sikh temple. Theatre stormed by a few demonstrators. (BBC)
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy:
  • Voting machine manufacturer Diebold will pay a $2.6 million settlement to the State of California over the lawsuit filed by the state in September alleging that Diebold was not truthful about the security and reliability of its electronic voting machines. (internetnews.com)
  • In a sharp change from their traditional role, several members of the U.S. Electoral College have filed a protest of the official election results, one even casting his electoral vote "provisionally" upon a revote. These electors have called for a member of the U.S. Senate to protest the election results on January 6th. (AP) (Sacramento Bee) (Burlington Union)
• In Topeka, Kansas, USA, infant Victoria Jo Stinnett is returned to her father three days after her mother was allegedly strangled to death and she was cut from her mother's uterus and abducted. The AMBER Alert system is credited with helping to safely recover the child. (CNN)
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Palestinians fire several Qassam rockets at the civilian town Sderot and the northern Negev, causing damage but no casualties. (Haaretz)
  • Another three Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers on Saturday during an Israeli incursion into the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, raising the death toll to 11. According to Palestinian sources, three of those killed were civilians, the rest were militants from Hamas and Fatah's Abu Reish Brigades. The IDF has officialy ended Khan Yunis raid, dubbed "Operation Orange Iron", and threatened to return if mortar shelling will be renewed by militants. (BBC) , (Haaretz)
  • Palestinians have been unable to bury the dead because Israeli forces were in control at the local cemetery, medics told the Reuters news agency. (BBC)
  • Six Palestinians were rescued from a collapsed tunnel under an Israel-controlled corridor in the Egypt-Gaza border area. (BBC)
• Former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet has been taken to hospital after suffering a stroke. (BBC)
• Darfur conflict: The African Union has given both sides involved in the Darfur conflict a deadline of 1700 GMT to halt the fighting in the region which currently violates the ceasefire agreement. If this wasn't met talks in Nigeria to find a solution to the conflict would end. (BBC)
• Conflict in Iraq:
  • Former senior Iraqi official Ali Hassan al-Majid (aka "Chemical Ali") is questioned by Iraqi judges in a pre-trial hearing. He is accused of crimes committed by the regime, such as the gassing of Iraqi Kurds in 1988. (BBC) (Reuters)
  • Iraqi insurgents attack election offices in northern Iraq, killing two people and wounding nine, six weeks before the country is due to go to the polls. (Reuters)

• United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld faces criticism from both Democrats and Republicans following a dismissive reply to a soldier in Iraq when questioned about vehicle armor. (CNN)
• Cuban authorities put up photos of abused Iraqi prisoners in front of the US interests section in Havana after the US displayed Christmas decorations in a protest against Cuba's human rights record. (BBC)
• The United States declares Hizbullah's al-Manar TV channel to be a terrorist organization. (White House Official Statement) (Al-Jazeera)
• A public inquiry into the deaths of 85 Muslim protesters in southern Thailand claims the killings were "not deliberate". 78 people suffocated to death after being piled into army trucks by Thai security forces; 7 were shot at the separatist protests on October 25. (BBC)
• U.S. President George W. Bush signs the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, creating the office of the Director of National Intelligence to oversee the country's fifteen spy agencies. (ABC News)
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
  • The Israeli Labor party and Ariel Sharon's Likud Party reach an agreement, forming a unity government in order to implement Israel's unilateral disengagement plan of 2004. In return, the Labor will receive eight cabinet portfolios, including "peace/disengagement minister" specially suited for Shimon Peres and Internal Affairs. (Yahoo/Reuters) (BBC)
  • Israeli forces, accompanied by armored bulldozers and helicopter gunships, raid the Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis, killing 8 Palestinians, including 2 civilians, and wounding 24, after 50 mortar shells were fired on the Gush Katif settlements and caused injuries to some Israeli Soldiers and killed a Thai worker. (BBC) (Maariv) (Haaretz)
  • In retaliation for the Israeli raid, Palestinians from Hamas and the Abu-Reish faction shoot at least five anti-tank missiles, wounding two Israeli soldiers. (BBC) (Haaretz) (Maariv) (CTV Canada)
  • Hundreds of Palestinians flee homes in the area, fearful that Israeli troops will destroy their homes. They take refuge in nearby hospital and a stadium, while others have moved to relatives who live further to the centre of the Gaza Strip. (BBC) (Haaretz)
  • In Rafah, five Palestinians are trapped when the tunnel they were digging collapsed. Rescue efforts, with the assist of Israeli bulldozers, are in progress though estimations are that the five are dead. (Haaretz) (Yahoo\Reuters)
• U.S. President George W. Bush, speaking to business executives and economists at the White House, vows to push through big reforms to the Social Security program, including partial privatization of the state pension fund, during his second term. (BBC)
• The E.U. states that Turkey must recognize the ethnic-Greek government of E.U. member state Cyprus before it can begin negotiations for E.U. membership. Currently Turkey is the only country that recognizes the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. (ITV) (Turkish Press)
• Police in West Java, Indonesia, say that they have found nine home-made bombs on a bus during a security operation. (Channel News Asia)(Jakarta Post)
• Three suspected IRA members who were accused of training rebels in Colombia flee while on bail. An appellate court overturned their earlier acquittals yesterday. They had been sentenced to prison for 17 years. (BBC) (Ireland Online)
• Bhutan's ban on the sale of all tobacco products comes into effect. (Hindustan Times) (BBC)
• Russia intends to allow Polish officials to see files related to the Katyn massacre. (BBC)
• The United Nations finds a surveillance bug in its European headquarters in Geneva in a room used by ministers from major powers last year during private talks on Iraq. (BBC) (NZZ)

• Belgian child killer Marc Dutroux loses an appeal against his life sentence . (Expatica)(News.Com)
• Leaders of the European Union, meeting in Brussels, agree to invite Turkey to begin negotiations to join the EU from 3 October 2005, about 36 years after they first applied to join. (BBC)
• In the Western Districts of Nepal, nearly 50 people are killed in clashes between Nepalese troops and Maoist rebels. (BBC)
• A commuter in Zimbabwe who allegedly insulted President Robert Mugabe could face up to five years in prison for undermining the president's authority. (BBC)
• Inuit leaders want to sue the U.S. government at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for causing global warming. They view the melting of the polar icecap in the Arctic as a threat to their existence as a people, an assault on their basic human rights. The announcement is expected today in Buenos Aires at the 10th round of international talks on climate change. (NYT) (Democracy Now!)
• The British final court of appeal, the Law Lords, rule that the suspension of habeas corpus for foreign nationals detained under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 is illegal, being incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. (BBC) (judgment)
• Cambodian soldiers discover a cache of Angkor Wat-era carvings that were to be smuggled out of the country. (Reuters)
• Thai security forces pursue 100 people connected to the unrest in the south of the country. Four Islamic teachers have been arrested on suspicion of inciting terrorism. (Channel News Asia) (Reuters)
• Former chess champion Bobby Fischer has been offered residency in Iceland. He is currently detained in Japan, and is wanted by the United States. (BBC)(Reuters)

• CNN's business news network CNNfn ends transmissions. (CNN)
• U.K. Home Secretary David Blunkett resigns from his post in the wake of numerous controversies. He is replaced by Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills. Ruth Kelly takes over from Clarke as Education Secretary and becomes the sixth woman in prime minister Tony Blair's Cabinet. Kelly is replaced as Cabinet Office minister by David Miliband. (Sky) (BBC)
• In Athens, Greece, two gunmen, possibly Albanian, seize a bus at 7:00 local time and take 25 hostages on board. The hijackers threaten to blow up the bus at 08:00 Greek time (06:00 GMT, Thursday) if their demands for €1 million and a flight to Russia are not met. The hostage crisis ends peacefully after 18 hours when the two gunmen surrender. All the hostages are released unharmed. (Sky)(News24) (OfficialWire)(Reuters)
• An armed group of young ethnic Albanians, allegedly former NLA guerrilla members, seal off the village of Kondovo, Macedonia, a suburb of the capital Skopje, citing poor conditions and repression by state authorities. The fledgling multi-ethnic governing coalition plays down the incident stating it is a local problem stemming from the slow implementation of the peace agreement after the 2001 civil war, while some opposition parties call for "strong action". (RealityMK) (TOL)
• Democratic Party members of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary request an FBI investigation into alleged Ohio voting problems, (NYT) (pdf) prompted by affidavits and sworn testimony taken at a congressional forum held on December 13. [2]
• A US$85 million test of the U.S. National Missile Defense system by the Missile Defense Agency is aborted when an unknown anomaly is detected before the launch of an interceptor missile in the Marshall Islands, 16 minutes after the launch of the target from Kodiak Island, Alaska. It is the first test since a previous failed test in 2002. As in 2002, the Bush administration abandons plans to activate the system by the end of the year, and projects its activation in early 2005. (Reuters) (Associated Press)
• Sprint Corporation announces a US$35 billion deal to acquire Nextel Communications. With about $40 billion in combined yearly revenue the resulting company (called Sprint Nextel) will be the the third largest wireless telephone service provider in the US. (MSNBC)
• Human rights in Iraq: The US is forced to release evidence which shows prisoners in Iraq were subject to mock executions, electric shocks, and burns by US Marines. (BBC)
• Iraqi transitional parliamentary election: Iraq's defense minister accuses Iran and Syria of supporting terrorists and charges that a senior Iraqi Shiite was leading a "pro-Iranian" coalition into next month's national elections. (AP via Yahoo)
• North Korea announces that if Japan is to impose any sanctions over the ashes of kidnap victim Yokota Megumi, it will be regarded as a declaration of war. (Japan Today) The Japanese government downplays the criticism. (News24)(Bloomberg) (Japan Today)
• At least five people die in a second Indian train accident, blamed on negligence by railway officials. The new accident comes after the previous day's train crash with an eventual death toll of 37. (Times of India) (Reuters) (News24)
• United Nations envoy Jan Pronk says that 10,000 peacekeepers are needed in Sudan to monitor the forthcoming peace deal. (Reuters Alertnet)
• Pitcairn Islands election, 2004: Jay Warren becomes Mayor of Pitcairn Island.

• Same-sex marriage in Canada: Federal justice minister Irwin Cotler announces that the bill to legalize same-sex marriage will contain a provision allowing civic officials to refuse to perform such ceremonies. (365Gay)
• Nick Griffin and John Tyndall, the current and previous leaders of the far-right British National Party, are arrested and bailed in relation to investigations by British police into suspicion of incitement to racial hatred. (BBC)
• Bahrain, the smallest Persian Gulf nation, unfurls the world's largest national flag at a sports stadium car park. (BBC)
• Arab-Israeli Conflict:
  • A Thai worker is killed and two more are injured in Gush Katif by Palestinian mortar shells. (Haaretz)
  • The Syrian government blames Israel for a failed attempt to kill an alleged senior Hamas member in Damascus yesterday. (BBC)
  • The leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, tells the BBC's Newsnight programme that his group has had secret contacts with the United States and the European Union. (BBC)
  • Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas calls for an end to violence in the 4-year old intifada and a return to non-violent resistance. The announcement comes two days after a faction of Abbas's Fatah party, Fatah Hawks, claims responsibility for an attack killing at least 5 Israeli soldiers. (Reuters)
• Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian resigns as Chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party to take responsibility for the pan-green alliance's failure to win a majority in the legislative election. (BBC)
• Two trains collide in the northern Indian state of Punjab, killing at least 50 people. One of the trains was carrying Hindu pilgrims returning from Vaishno Devi. (BBC)(The Times-UK)
• The US admits that more prisoners have died in American custody in Afghanistan than it has previously acknowledged. (BBC)
• Another car bomb detonates inside the Green Zone of Baghdad. Iraqi doctors claim at least 7 deaths and 12 injuries. (BBC) (News24)
• President Chirac inaugurates the world's highest road bridge in southern France. The Millau Viaduct over the River Tarn is higher than the Eiffel Tower. It is expected to open to traffic on Thursday. (BBC)
• A new species of monkey, the Arunachal Macaque, is discovered in India. It is the first new macaque discovered since 1903 and the first new primate in 49 years. (NCF India)

• Self-confessed cannibal Yoo Young-Chul, convicted of killing 20 people, mostly prostitutes, is sentenced to death in Seoul, South Korea. (Xinhua)
• France's highest administrative court, the Conseil d'État, bans Hizbullah's al-Manar TV station on the grounds that it incites racial hatred and antisemitism. (BBC)
• The jury in the Scott Peterson trial recommends that he be sentenced to death for the murder of his wife and unborn son. (CNN)
• Augusto Pinochet is charged by Chilean prosecutors for alleged involvement in murder and "disappearances" in Chile in the 1970s, and is placed under house arrest. (BBC)
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy:
  • As required by the United States Constitution, Members of the United States Electoral College meet in all 50 state capitols and the District of Columbia to cast their electoral votes, including an unexpected single vote for John Edwards by an elector in Minnesota. (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
  • All members of the Ohio delegation of the Electoral College cast their ballots for George W. Bush while a legal recount is still ongoing, after a written request by 11 Democratic congressmen (pdf) to suspend voting. (ABC) (ABC)
  • The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary hears testimony at a forum in Colombus, Ohio regarding problems with the 2004 presidential election. (freepress.org) (statements) (audio, mp3) (video, wmv)
• United States Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael O. Leavitt is nominated by President George W. Bush to succeed outgoing Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson in the Cabinet-level post. (Bloomberg)
• Conflict in Iraq:
  • At least 13 people die following a car bomb attack on a U.S. checkpoint near the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq. (The Guardian)
  • The U.S. launches another air raid on the Iraqi city of Fallujah after eight US Marines were killed by insurgents over the weekend. (ABC {aus})
• Foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration: Human Rights Watch, a New York based NGO claims that another three prisoners have died while in U.S. detention in Afghanistan. (BBC)
• Hundreds of protesters have gathered in Cairo outside Egypt's Supreme Judiciary buildings, defying a ban on public protests, to call for an end to Hosni Mubarak's 23-year presidency of Egypt. (BBC)
• Romanian presidential election, 2004: Prime Minister Adrian Năstase concedes defeat to opposition candidate Traian Băsescu after a close contest. With 99% of the vote counted, Băsescu took 51.23% of the vote to Năstase's 48.77%. (BBC)
• Oracle Corporation announces a merger deal to acquire PeopleSoft for approximately US$10.3 billion. (Oracle Press Release)

• According to the Washington Post the Bush administration used wire taps to intercept a number of phone conversations of Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency in hope of finding information that would help remove ElBaradei from his post. (CNN) (The Washington Post)
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
  • At least 5 Israeli soldiers are killed and 10 are injured as a tunnel rigged with 1500 kg of explosives exploded near the Rafah crossing between Rafah and Egypt. Hamas and an al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades' offshoot called "Fatah Hawk" claimed joint responsibility. (Haaretz) (CNN)
  • 5 Palestinian schoolchildren were wounded, recieving shrapnel wounds from Israeli Tank Fire. (Ha'Aretz)
• Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti withdraws his nomination in the Palestinian presidential election just ten days after announcing his candidacy, and instead endorses Fatah candidate Mahmoud Abbas. (BBC)
• Romania presidential run-off: Exit-polls show that the difference between the two candidates (Traian Băsescu and Adrian Năstase) is very small, estimated at less than 0.01%. (BBC)
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy:
  • The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary will be holding a congressional forum in Columbus concerning new evidence of election irregularities and fraud in Ohio, the issue of Ohio electors meeting while recounts and litigation are pending, and to discuss legislative and other responses to the problems, on Dec. 13. (pdf)
  • The Civil Rights Coalition schedules a protest for Dec. 18, demanding a re-vote in "areas where substantive disenfranchisement took place" and the prosecution of officials involved in "election fraud." (Civil Rights Coalition)
• A bomb blast in a General Santos City, Philippines, supermarket leaves at least 58 people injured and 15 dead.(AOL news)

• M.S. Subbulakshmi, one of the most popular Carnatic vocalists in Indian history, passes away from complications arising from pneumonia. In her lifetime, she earned the Ramon Magsaysay award and was the first musician to earn the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award. (The Daily Star)
• Jean-Christophe Lafaille, a French climber, climbed Shishapangma, the first solo ascension of a eight-thousander in winter from a new route in the South face.
• Vanuatu Prime Minister Serge Vohor is ousted in a vote of no-confidence and replaced by Ham Lini. Vohor had fallen out of favor with his cabinet after he unilaterally travelled to Taipei and established diplomatic relations with the Taiwan. The Vanuatu Council of Ministers voted to void the decision and continue relations with the People's Republic of China. (Reuters) (CRI)
• The opposition pan-blue alliance achieves a majority in the Taiwanese legislative election, garnering at least 114 of the 225 seats. The governing Democratic Progressive Party and its pan-green allies win 101 seats. (BBC) (Guardian: AP) (China Post)
• Doctors in Austria confirm that Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko's illness was caused by dioxin poisoning. It is alleged that he first became ill after dining with the chairman of the Ukrainian Security Service in early September. (BBC) (Yahoo News)
• Bernard Kerik withdraws his nomination for the post of Secretary of Homeland Security, fearing a scandal over the immigration status of his nanny. (Newsday) (Bloomberg)

• Israeli troops kill Rania Siam, an 8-year-old Palestinian girl, as she eats lunch in the kitchen of her home in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip. Earlier, three mortar shells are fired into the nearby Israeli settlement of Neve Dekalim injuring four people, one of them a child. Hamas claims responsibility. Israeli troops fire in the general direction the source of mortar fire. The Israeli army says it will investigate Rania Siam's death. (NYT)
• A riot forms in Puerto Rico between members of the PIP, the FUPI, the Socialist party and members of the police in front of the federal court business, where PIP and PNP backers had shown two days before the outcome of the 2004 Puerto Rican elections are decided by a judge. Several people, including seven policemen, are severely injured. (El Vocero, in Spanish)
• Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is acquitted of bribery thanks to the statute of limitations. The court's ruling implied that Berlusconi probably was guilty of bribing a judge in 1991, but said that too much time had passed for him to be punished. Financial Times Reuters
• The 2004 Nobel Prizes are handed out at twin ceremonies in Oslo and Stockholm. (Canadian Press) (BBC)
• "Godfather of Soul" James Brown is diagnosed with prostate cancer and will undergo surgery next week. (BBC)
• A bomb explodes at a market in the Pakistani city of Quetta, leaving at least ten people dead. (BBC)
• The Inter-American Court of Human Rights orders Guatemala to pay USD $7.9 million in compensation to 317 survivors of the 1982 Plan de Sánchez massacre in which soldiers and paramilitaries killed 268 villagers. (Reuters)
• Austrian Interior Minister Ernst Strasser resigns. (Der Standard)
• An explosion at a Chinese coal mine in Shaanxi province claims 33 lives. (IOL) (ChannelNewsAsia) (SwissInfo)
• President of Ghana John Kufuor is re-elected to his second term in office. (GhanaWeb) (Reuters)
• A Malaysian freighter is spilling oil in the Aleutians. Weather is hampering rescue and clean-up efforts. A rescue helicopter sent Wednesday to rescue the crew crashed. (Reuters) (Seattle Times)
• Princess Cristina of Spain is reported to be pregnant for the fourth time. (Reuters) (SwissInfo)
• Camp X-Ray Prisoner Controversy: "Australian Taleban" David Hicks, held at the US military camp in Guantánamo Bay, says he has been beaten, kicked, handcuffed and blindfolded, his head slammed into concrete, forced to run in leg shackles, routinely deprived of sleep and offered the services of a prostitute by US troops. (BBC)
• Conflict in Iraq: Cpl Wassef Ali Hassoun, a U.S. Marine who turned up in Lebanon after disappearing from Iraq, is charged with desertion. (BBC)

• President George W. Bush nominates Jim Nicholson, U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, as his nominee for Veterans Affairs Secretary replacing out going secretary Anthony Principi.
• Police discover four packages of suspected explosives at the Taipei main railway station shortly before the legislative election is to take place. (Reuters)
• Japan and Germany have jointly declared they want permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council with the veto power of the five current permanent members.(VOA)
• The British Law Lords hold treatment of Czech Roma by UK immigration officers at Prague airport to be discriminatory. (opinions) Since the enlargement of the European Union earlier this year, free movement of EU citizens includes Czechs. (Guardian) (BBC)
• Lord Dubs presents the Succession to the Crown Bill (bill) in the United Kingdom Parliament. (Guardian)
• Acting on a reference from Parliament, the Canadian Supreme Court states that a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Canada would be constitutional. They decline to say if the Constitution requires that recognition, saying that by not appealing several provincial courts' decisions to that effect, the government has already adopted that position. (CBC) Prime Minister Paul Martin says his government will introduce same-sex marriage legislation in January. (CBC)
• In a move denounced as "unconstitutional" by the opposition, Ecuador's Congress dismisses all 31 of the country's supreme court justices. (BBC)
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
  • Israeli troops kill at least four Palestinians found crawling into Egypt on the Gaza Border. (China View) (Haaretz)
  • Palestinian presidential candidate Mustafa Barghouti claims to have been "detained and beaten" by Israeli soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint. (BBC)
• The government of Lesotho announces plans to give women legal equality and property rights within a year. (Reuters)
• The International Rescue Committee says that the Congo Civil War is killing 1000 people a day and calls the international response "abysmal". (BBC)
• Former Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell and another member of his new band, Damageplan, are shot and killed during a live performance in Columbus, Ohio, USA. Police shoot and kill the gunman. (NBC)

• Delegates from twelve South American countries meeting in Cuzco, Peru, sign a deal creating the South American Community of Nations, a bloc modelled on the European Union. (BBC)
• The Israeli government indicates that it will recognize same-sex partnerships for certain benefits, and will introduce legislation formalizing this status. (365gay.com)
• Civil unions in New Zealand: Parliament passes civil union legislation by 65 votes to 55. The new law provides a way for de facto couples, including same-sex couples, to gain legal recognition of their relationships, but stops short of same-sex marriage. (Scoop) (TVNZ)
• The White House affirms that, despite reports to the contrary, John Snow will remain Treasury Secretary during President George W. Bush's second term of office. Meanwhile, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi announces his expected resignation. (CNN)
• The United States Senate follows the U.S. House of Representatives in approving a complete overhaul of government intelligence services, creating the post of United States Director of National Intelligence. (BBC)
• The European Union says it is not ready to lift its 15-year-old arms embargo on the People's Republic of China, set after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. (BBC)
• Malaysian Deputy Home Affairs Minister Tan Chai Ho announces that once an extended amnesty sought by Indonesia comes to an end later this year, illegal immigrants will face up to 5 years in prison and a whipping; their employers will also be punished. More than 18,000 undocumented migrants have already been whipped since the 2002 amendment to the Malaysian Immigration Act. (China View) (Channel News Asia)
• IBM announces that it will sell its PC hardware business to Lenovo, a Chinese computer company. (BBC)
• Seer Jayendra Saraswathi, a senior Hindu cleric, has been denied bail over his murder charge in India's southern Tamil Nadu state. (BBC)
• The Times reports that Dr. Nikolai Korpan, who treated Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in Vienna, announced Yushchenko had been poisoned, and that the specific poison would be identified within days, but later denied the report, saying he had been cited wrongly and that it would be hard to gain hard evidence for a poisoning. (Times Online) (Yahoo News)

• The United States Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of state laws that block merchants from shipping wine across state lines. Affected businesses and consumers claim that such laws are invalid under the commerce clause, long held to ban a state's discrimination against interstate commerce.
• Frans van Anraat is arrested in the Netherlands for shipping chemical weapons precursors to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War (CNN)
• High profile Democratic New York State attorney general Eliot Spitzer announces his campaign for Governor in 2006. (Yahoo)
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Two Hamas militants, two Islamic Jihad members and an Israeli soldier have died following clashes in the central Gaza Strip. (BBC)
  • Shahar Dvir-Zeliger, a Jewish settler in Nablus, has been sentenced to eight years imprisonment for membership of an extremist group. He was found guilty of being a member of the Bat Ayin cell, which has killed eight Palestinians. (BBC)
  • An entire Israeli Army elite unit has been suspended from duty while investigations continue into what B'Tselem alleges was a killing of an unnarmed injuried Palestinian man. (BBC)
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy:
  • In a sworn affidavit Monday, a former programmer for a NASA contractor said that he developed a vote-rigging prototype at the request of a then-Florida state representative, Tom Feeney, who is now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. (Blue Lemur)(bradblog)
  • Ohio Secretary of State, and Co-Chair of the George Bush Ohio Campaign, Ken Blackwell certifies election results. Two parallel vote count efforts are pending, one claims evidence that John Kerry is the legitimate winner of Ohio. (Associated Press) (NYT)
• The U.S. military discusses plans for mandatory visibly worn ID badges, forced labor, DNA testing, and retina scans at "citizen processing centers" for all residents of the rebellious Iraqi city of Fallujah, saying they plan to make it a model city for the whole of Iraq. (Boston Globe)
• Hamid Karzai is inaugurated as President of Afghanistan. (CNN) (BBC)

• Former Houston Rockets star Calvin Murphy acquitted of charges that he molested his five daughters. (Houston Chronicle)
• Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams recommends that Sinn Féin support a British-Irish power-sharing plan for Northern Ireland that involves the public decommissioning of the arms held by the Irish Republican Army. Ian Paisley of the loyalist Democratic Unionist Party may become first minister of Northern Ireland, with former IRA member Martin McGuinness as his deputy. (BBC)
• United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has come under fire after reports claim that his son received payments from a Swiss company that won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil for Food program. (BBC)
• The U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is car bombed and then stormed by gunmen, killing nine Saudis. Saudi security forces kill three of the gunmen, arrest two others, and are in pursuit of several more. There are no U.S. casualties. (BBC) (Reuters/AFP)
• In Spain the Basque separatist group ETA detonate seven bombs in bars, cafes and town squares across the country. The cities attacked are León, Ávila, Santillana del Mar, Ciudad Real, Málaga, Valladolid, and Alicante. All the attacks were preceded by warnings and nobody was seriously hurt. (BBC)
• Ukrainian presidential election controversy: EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has returned to Ukraine for talks on the country's political crisis.(BBC)

• In Taiwan, rallies are held in support of candidates in this week's elections to the Legislative Yuan (parliament). Party sources estimate that separate rallies held in Taipei by the Kuomintang and Taiwan Solidarity Union drew around 100,000 each. (VOA) (TaipeiTimes)
• A referendum in Hungary to grant citizenship to ethnic Hungarians living in other countries appears to have failed due to insufficient turnout. The proposal has angered the governments of countries with significant Hungarian populations, particularly Romania. The Prime Minister of Hungary, Ferenc Gyurcsány, opposed the referendum. (Reuters)
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy:
  • Hundreds gather at the Ohio statehouse to demand a recount of votes, citing fraud that took votes from John Kerry and gave them to George W. Bush. (AP)
  • A lawsuit challenging the Volusia County, Florida election is thrown out for being a day late. The suit claims paperwork is missing from 59 of Volusia's 179 precincts and that precinct printouts show different numbers. (AP)
• The Thai government drops millions of origami cranes on its restive, predominantly Muslim provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, saying that they are a gesture of goodwill and peace. (Channel News Asia) (BBC)
• Conflict in Iraq:
  • More than 20 are killed and many more injured in a series of attacks on Iraqis working for the United States by Iraqi insurgents today. (ABC)(BBC)(Reuters)
• French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin seeks to ban Hizbullah's TV channel al-Manar from broadcasting in France due to purported anti-Semitic content, most recently involving a commentator speaking of "Zionist attempts to transmit AIDS to Arab countries". al-Manar claims to be anti-Israeli rather than anti-Semitic. (BBC)
• In a prisoner exchange between Israel and Egypt, Egypt releases Azzam Azzam, an Israeli Druze businessman sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by Egypt in 1997 on charges of spying for Israel, while Israel releases 6 Egyptian students who allegedly infiltrated Israel to kidnap soldiers. (Haaretz) (BBC)
• With more than 1000 people dead or missing, devastation in the northern agricultural regions, and damaged infrastructure after Monday's storm and Thursday's Typhoon Nanmadol, Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo suspends logging and pledges to prosecute violators. (Malaysia Star)(Boston Globe) (New York Times)

• The Mozambique presidential election vote count continues in all of the country, with Frelimo and its candidate Armando Guebuza leading, according to the preliminary results already known, and especially in Maputo, Gaza and Inhambane, traditional regions of influence for the party in power. (Wikinews)
• Militants blow up a vehicle in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, India killing a major, 9 soldiers of the Rashtriya Rifles and 2 civilians using an improvised explosive device. (Reuters)
• Peruvian-born María Julia Mantilla García is crowned Miss World. (Reuters)

• Dragomir Milosevic, the general who besieged Sarajevo for 3 years during the Bosnian Civil War surrenders to the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. 12,000 people died during the siege. (AFP)
• The People's Republic of China launches a new long-range nuclear submarine and an accompanying class of ballistic missiles, with a range in excess of 7,400 km (4,600 miles), developed by the People's Liberation Army. (AP)
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy: The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary schedules a public congressional forum on voting irregularities in Ohio on December 8. (House.gov (PDF))
• Yukos loses an appeal to halt the auctioning off of its main production unit. President of Russia Vladimir Putin, while on his three day visit to India, says Indian firms are welcomed to bid. (BBC)
• Kosovo's parliament elects a former KLA commander, Ramush Haradinaj, who has been questioned twice by UN war crimes investigators. (BBC)
• Conflict in Iraq:
  • A car bomb explodes outside a Shi'a mosque in a Baghdad Sunni district, killing 14 worshippers and wounding 19. Mortars land on a police station in Baghdad, followed by an assault which kills 12 people and results in the freeing of 50 prisoners. A website allegedly tied to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claims responsibility for the police station attack. (BBC) (Reuters)
  • The U.S. Agency for International Development states they aim to boost the availability of electricity throughout Iraq to 18 hours a day by the end of next year from 11 to 15 hours now, estimably higher than before the 2003 U.S. invasion. (Reuters)
  • The Ukrainian parliament, embroiled in the presidential election controversy, votes to ask outgoing president Leonid Kuchma to withdraw Ukraine's 1,600 troops in Iraq. (Reuters)
  • German security forces arrest three alleged members of Ansar al-Islam who are suspected of planning the assassination of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi while he was on a state visit to Germany. (CNN)(Spiegel (German))
• U.S. President George W. Bush nominates former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik to replace outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge in the Cabinet position. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson also announces his resignation. (Reuters)
• Following warnings by separatist group ETA, a number of devices explode in Madrid. (Reuters) (BBC) (Wikinews)
• Ukrainian Supreme Court rules that the 2004 second round presidential results are invalid and requires a new vote to be completed within three weeks without determining whether the second round will be re-run or an entirely new election will be run. (BBC) (Yahoo! News)
• Rwanda denies it has sent any troops to Congo. Reuters quotes unnamed diplomatic sources that claim that the troops were there only temporarily. (BBC) (Reuters)
• Brazilian paleontologists of the University of Rio de Janeiro announce a find of a new dinosaur species, Unaysaurus tolentinoi. The find also shows links to Europe when both continents were part of Pangaea. (Reuters) (BBC) (News 24)
• Typhoon Nanmadol slams into the island of Luzon in the Philippines, less than a week after tropical depression locally called "Winnie" caused landslides and floods in the region also affected by the earlier typhoons Muifa and Merbok. Floods and landslides by Winnie killed at least 495 persons. More people are expected to be declared missing or dead as typhoon Nanmadol leaves the country later today. (CNN) (Inquirer/GMA7)
• Dissident investors in Disney, including former board member Roy Disney, nephew of the company founder Walt Disney, announced that they won't nominate a slate of alternate directors for the 2005 annual meeting. The announcement is a sign of an easing of tensions at that corporation's board. thestreet.com

• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy: The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary requests Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell to respond to alleged voting irregularities. (House.gov (PDF))
• The Inter-American Court of Human Rights upholds Peru's conviction and continued imprisonment of U.S. citizen Lori Berenson on terrorism charges. (BBC) (AP)
• A spokesman for George W. Bush requests that Myanmar release dissident opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose house arrest was recently extended. (BBC)
• Iran's nuclear program: United Nations inspectors wishing to inspect the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran and Lavizan II in northeastern Tehran lack the legal authority according to United Nations diplomats. (Reuters)
• British Member of Parliament and anti-war activist George Galloway wins his libel case against the Daily Telegraph, which during the invasion of Iraq had published a story suggesting that Galloway had been in the pay of Saddam Hussein. (BBC)
• U.S. President George W. Bush nominates Nebraska Governor Mike Johanns to become the next Secretary of Agriculture. If confirmed by the Senate, Johanns would fill the Cabinet position currently held by resigning Secretary Ann Veneman. (Reuters) (Transcript)
• The life sentence of Mijailo Mijailovic, killer of Swedish minister Anna Lindh, is confirmed by the Swedish Supreme Court (BBC) (Reuters) (Bloomberg)
• The European Union takes over from NATO in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, largely replacing the NATO-led SFOR with a new Eufor. (BBC)
• India announces a new effort to survey and decontaminate the area affected by the December 3, 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster. (BBC)
• Conflict in Iraq: The U.S. military, citing security concerns for the Iraqi transitional parliamentary election scheduled for January 30, 2005, announces the deployment of 1,500 additional troops to Iraq and tour extensions bringing the number to an all time high of 150,000. (Reuters) (CNN)

• U.S. TV personality Tom Brokaw ends his career as anchor for NBC Nightly News.
• Palestinian presidential election, 2005: Jailed Palestinian Marwan Barghouti joins the race to succeed Yasser Arafat, bringing the total to 10 candidates, drawing criticism from Arafat's Fatah movement. (Reuters)(BBC)
• AIDS pandemic: The head of Brazil's AIDS program says the government will violate patents on anti-AIDS drugs by copying them, citing unsustainable increases in cost. (BBC)
• Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ends the Likud-led coalition after he fires ministers from the secular Shinui party, which voted to defeat the annual budget over subsidies to religious parties. (Haaretz) (BBC) (Reuters)
• 2004 Ukrainian presidential election: Ukraine's parliament, Verkhovna Rada, passes a vote of no-confidence to dismiss Viktor Yanukovich as Prime Minister. The opposition led by Viktor Yushchenko agrees to continue negotiations and end the blockade of official buildings. (Reuters) (BBC)
• Serbia's interior minister says the "assassination attempt" on president Boris Tadic was a case of road rage against his motor convoy in Belgrade traffic. (Reuters)
• CBS and NBC refuse to air an advertisement by the United Church of Christ citing the advocacy of accepting homosexuals is "too controversial". The advertisement was accepted by numerous other networks including Fox, ABC and TBS. (CNN) (UCC)
• A French appeals court reduces former Prime Minister Alain Juppé's disqualification from holding public office from ten years to one, opening up the way for him to contend in the 2007 presidential election. (BBC)
• Côte d'Ivoire conflict: French officials acknowledge troops killed around 20 people during clashes with anti-French protestors, but maintain the French troops acted in self-defense and gave warning shots, contrary to Ivoirian police claims. (BBC)
• Chinese state media confirms all 166 miners missing after a coal mine explosion in central Shaanxi province on November 28 are dead. (Xinhua) (BBC)
• Rwandan troops are spotted by UN personnel in eastern Congo where Congolese officials say the troops are attacking and burning villages. The last invasion started the Congo Civil War, which resulted in the deaths of 3-4 million people. (Reuters)
• An Indonesian MD-82 from the charter airline Lion Air crashes in Central Java, killing at least 31 people and injuring at least 62 people. (CNN) (Reuters)
• A report commissioned by U.N. Secretary General calls for radical reform of the United Nations, including expansion of the U.N. Security Council. (AP)
• Egypt and Israel hold talks in Jerusalem to discuss the planned Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. (BBC)
• United States President George W. Bush holds talks with Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin in his first official visit to the country and agrees to work together to combat terrorism. (BBC)
• David Blunkett, U.K. Home Secretary, insists that he did no wrong in the controversy surrounding the alleged misuse of his position, and receives the backing of Prime Minister Tony Blair. Sir Alan Budd is appointed to carry out an independent enquiry. (BBC)

2004: January February March April May June July August September October November
2003: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2002: January February March April May June July August September October November December

Logarithmic timeline of current events - most important events of the last ten years on one page.

• Wikipedia:News collections and sources.
• Wikipedia:News sources - This has much of the same material organised in a hierarchical manner to help encourage NPOV in our news reporting.

• WikiNews