Portal:Current events/2003 August 9

August 9, 2003 (2003-08-09) (Saturday)

• A historic heat wave continues to afflict Europe and is expected to continue for another week. Spain and Portugal are particularly hard hit; forest fires in Portugal are declared a national disaster, with damages estimated at €1 billion. Other fires are reported on Majorca and in the Canary Islands. Temperatures of 49 °C are recorded in Andalusia. Scotland records its highest temperature in history, 32.9 °C (91.2 °F) at Greycrook, near Newtown St. Boswells, Borders, the previous record had stood since 1908. The cause of the heat wave is believed to be a stagnant air mass over the Sahara sending hot air as far north as Sweden.
• Occupation of Iraq: United States Central Command military officials confirm that Mahmoud Diyab al-Ahmed, the Iraqi Minister of Interior was in its custody. He occupies the number 29 position on the U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis. The Iraqi Minister of Interior surrendered to coalition forces yesterday. He was the seven of spades on the deck of cards distributed to U.S. troops.
• SCO v. IBM Linux lawsuit: Aduva, Inc., a Linux developing company, releases this week a tool to allow companies to replace any offending Linux code, if it exists, with code that does not infringe on SCO's intellectual property rights. It is unknown how this tool will work, as SCO has not disclosed which code it considers infringing.
• The city of Vyborg commence the 600-years anniversary of King Eric of Pomerania establishing the town's trading privileges in a Royal Charter.

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