Portal:Current events/2003 August 17

August 17, 2003 (2003-08-17) (Sunday)

• Major blackout: investigators now believe the blackout began in Ohio. FirstEnergy Corporation, which services 1.4 million people in the state, released a statement Saturday that three of its transmission lines tripped off at Unit 5 of their Eastlake Plant hours before the blackout, and may have been its cause.
• Terrorists again fired on children in Goraždevac, near Pec, this time while they were in the center of the village. No children were injured in this incident, just four days since the last.
• Saboteurs cause a series of explosions that damaged oil and water pipelines in Iraq.
• Iceland resumes whaling, 14 years after it stopped commercial whaling in 1989. It says that it will hunt 38 minke whales for research on the impact of the whales on fish stocks.
• In Canada, Herménégilde Chiasson is appointed lieutenant governor of New Brunswick on the recommendation of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.
• A Palestinian cameraman working for Reuters, Mazen Dana, is shot dead by a Coalition tank crew in Iraq while trying to film around Abu Ghraib prison, after a mortar attack on the prison. The tank crew mistook the camera for a grenade launcher.

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