2003 - News We Remember

[Jonathan]

This is a thread were we can look back and remember all the news from 2003.

Like the Sars virus which spread itself from southern China and infected about 8,000 people around the world, mostly in Asia and Canada. A few hundred died, which is nothing when you think of that hundreds of thousands of people die in flu every year. Then Sars seemed to just disappear in July, the epidemy was over. Even though Sars proved to be not so dangerous after all, the virus was very harmful to the Asian economy with less foreign investments and less tourism and all.

Then we have the war in Iraq and the aftermath. The world was split in two – those who supported the war and those who did not – and old friends became enemies.
Tanks rolled into Baghdad though Comical Ali said they were not, Hussein’s rule ended and the management of Iraq was given to the Coalition forces. Hussein himself was captured in mid-December – news which many thought were the best news of the year.
Though the war isn’t really over yet, Coalition soldiers are killed almost every day in Iraq. We will have to hope that 2004 becomes a calmer year for those in Iraq.

The Europeans might remember about Eastern Europe and the many referendums which were held there about joining the EU. A majority of the people in the countries voted ‘Yes’, so the EU will become ten member states richer next year.
And the talks about the new EU Constitution failed. It might take a long while and many summits until the 25 member states can agree with a new constitution. We just have to wait and see.

We remember the space shuttle Columbia and the 7 astronauts who died – six Americans and one Israeli. It must have been horrible for their families to see them just blow up like that.
Hope NASA can get the remaining shuttles up and running soon.

And Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected Governor in California! I thought that was really cool . I am sure the Californians will be satisfied with him.



Any other news you would like to bring up and shed some light on now at the end of the year?