Portal:Current events/2003 November 27

November 27, 2003 (2003-11-27) (Thursday)

• Scientists warn that a devastating influenza epidemic is not only inevitable but may be imminent.
• The People's Republic of China angrily rejects US anti-dumping measures on imports of televisions from China, saying that the US measures breach WTO agreements and discriminate against Chinese firms; Premier Wen Jiabao is due to visit Washington, DC, next month.
• British police say that explosives have been found in the Gloucester home of a 24-year-old man being held on suspicion of terrorist activity and links to Al-Qaeda; the suspect is British born of Asian origin.
• UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says that the global war against AIDS is being lost.
• War on Drugs: European Union justice ministers agree to tougher anti-drug laws, but the Netherlands say its "coffee shops"—where cannabis is openly sold and smoked—would survive.
• Peruvian police clash with campesinos in the town of Carhuamayo (department of Junín), leaving two dead and more than 20 people injured, during a protest against mining pollution. Strikers are demanding the government hand over $58 million from the privatization of a state electricity company for the cleanup.
• At the end of the First Count of elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, and reflecting the early tallies the Democratic Unionist Party attracts the highest popular vote, with Sinn Féin coming second, the Ulster Unionist Party third and the SDLP fourth. Minor parties like the Progressive Unionist Party, the Alliance Party and the UK Unionist Party suffer major collapse, with the Women's Coalition losing all its seats. Later counts are expected to boost the middle ground UUP and SDLP, who show greater possibilities of picking up inter-party transfers than the more extreme DUP and Sinn Féin. Nevertheless, Sinn Féin is widely expected to have more MLAs than the SDLP, a reversal of the results in the 1998 Assembly elections. It is too close to call whether the previous larger UUP or the Rev. Ian Paisley's DUP will have more seats after all counts. The final results will not be known until late on Friday, when all six seats in each constituency are filled. The election was held under PR.STV.
• Plans for the handover of power in Iraq have to be revised after senior Shiites object to indirect elections.
• President George W. Bush makes a surprise visit to Baghdad to visit the American troops on Thanksgiving Day. The visit is not announced publicly until after Bush has left.
• Larry Spencer of the Canadian Alliance party makes public statements stating his desire to recriminalize homosexual behaviour in Canada to combat what he claimed was a conspiracy by the homosexual community to infiltrate social institutions to recruit children into the "homosexual lifestyle". He was quickly denounced by numerous public figures including his own party leader, Stephen Harper, who also made him resign his position as Family Issue Critic in the Canadian House of Commons with an apology. However, commentators have noted that these inflammatory homophobic statements have placed the pending vote on the proposed merger with the Progressive Conservative Party on December 6 in jeopardy by illustrating fundamental differences between the parties concerning social attitudes.

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