Portal:Current events/2004 March 19

March 19, 2004 (Friday)

ICANN announces that a Toronto, Canada, organization, the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR), has applied to sponsor the.xxx top-level domain. IFFOR claims that a special domain would help control the spread of pornography to children. However, in February the Internet Engineering Task Force released RFC 3675, ".sex Considered Dangerous", detailing technical and administrative concerns with such proposals. (Web Host Industry Review) (IETF announcement) (.xxx application)
Pakistani soldiers seal off an area of South Waziristan where they suspect that the senior Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is hiding. The Pakistanis have suffered many casualties.(CNN)
The U.S. military drops all charges of alleged mishandling of classified information against Muslim Army chaplain Yousef Yee at Guantanamo Bay.(FOX)
Same-sex marriage in Canada: The Quebec Court of Appeal upholds a Quebec superior court ruling that same-sex marriages are valid under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (CBC) It joins Ontario and British Columbia in permitting same-sex marriage. The couple which brought the suit is scheduled to be wed on April 10, after a required 20-day waiting period.
Taiwan presidential election and referendum:
- The People's Republic of China announces joint military exercises with France close to Taiwan, to coincide with the elections.(BBC)
- President Chen Shui-bian and Vice-President Annette Lu are shot while campaigning in Tainan. A bullet hits Lu in the knee, before striking Chen in the stomach. The pair were travelling in the presidential motorcade. Both have left hospital after treatment. (Wash. Post) Archived 2012-10-19 at the Wayback Machine (ChannelNewsAsia) (BBC)
Äänekoski bus disaster: At least 24 young people are killed and 15 injured, several of them seriously, in a collision on an icy road between a coach and a lorry carrying rolls of paper on Highway 4 near Äänekoski in Central Finland. The accident happened at around 2 a.m. local time (UTC +2). (Helsingin Sanomat) Archived 2005-12-03 at the Wayback Machine (BBC)
The newspaper USA Today admits that a former reporter, Jack Kelley, invented or distorted important parts of at least eight major stories. He was, for example, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 on the basis of an eyewitness account of a suicide bombing that, the publication now acknowledges, could not have happened as described. (USA Today)