Faroese Prime Minister's Office announces that from then on the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office would use a new version of the Faroese Coat of Arms. The colours were inspired from the Merkið (flag) and yellow/gold was added. The new
Coat of Arms depicts a Ram on a blue shield ready to defend. It can be used by the Government Ministries and by
Faroese embassies, but some still use older versions of the
Coat of Arms.
PalestinianGeneral Haj Ismail Jabber is discovered to have been claiming the
payroll for 37,000 members of the
Palestinian Authority's National Security force when only 30,000 members exist. The difference of $2 million is kept by General Jabber each month.
(HaAretz)
At least three persons suspected in involvement in the
March 11, 2004 Madrid bombings blow themselves up in an apartment building in the Madrid suburb
Leganés as police officers try to arrest them. Besides the suspects, one police officer is killed and 11 injured.
(CBC)
At least two
Shiite Muslim followers of
militantIraqicleric,
Moqtada Sadr, are killed early in the day after throwing themselves in front of United States tanks during a demonstration in
Baghdad.
(AFP)
Supporters of
Moqtada Sadr outside a coalition military base in
Najaf, Iraq throw rocks and fire shots. Spanish troops and
Iraqi police return fire. Nineteen people (including some soldiers) are killed from the
fire.
(BBC)(VOA)
Mordechai Vanunu seeks to renounce his
Israeli citizenship to avoid confinement to the nation after his release from jail.
(Reuters)
For the first time in six years, a
Norwegian policeman is killed in the line of duty.
(Aftenposten)
Economists from
Harvard and
UNC - Chapel Hill determine that
peer-to-peer file sharing and music downloads "have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates."
(NYT)
A United States government study finds that an
African-American woman was 23 times more likely to be infected with
AIDS than is a white woman. Recent studies suggest that 30 percent of all black
bisexual men may be infected with HIV.
(NYT)
After "serious social resonance", the
Duma's
United Russia majority backpedals from outright support of a
billbanning public protests in many public places.
(Moscow Times)
ABC reports that British government sources believe that suspects arrested last week in the UK may have been plotting to make an improvised
chemical weapon using the toxic agent
osmium tetroxide.
(ABC/US)(BBC)
Iraqi insurgents and rebellious
Shiites challenge Coalition occupation forces. At least 30 Iraqis are killed. Sixteen Iraqis died in battles with
Marines in
Fallujah. At least 18 American soldiers and more than 116 Iraqis have died in three days of clashes. A
Salvadoran soldier and one from
Ukraine also are killed.
(AP)(Democracy Now!)
United States civilian administrator
Paul Bremer states that there is "no question" that coalition forces are in control. "I know if you just report on those few places, it does look chaotic. But if you travel around the country ... what you find is a bustling economy, people opening businesses right and left, unemployment has dropped."
(CNN)
Study reports estimates of how long it took for the last four reversals of the
Earth's magnetic field. It also reports that the turnarounds occur more quickly nearer the equator than at higher
latitudes closer to the
poles.
(MSN)
Militants inside the
Abdul-Aziz al-Samarrai mosque shoot at
US Marines, and Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne orders his men to return fire. "If they use the mosque as a military machine, then it's no longer a house of worship and we strike", he said.
(AP)
30 Americans and more than 150 Iraqis are dead in the fighting for the city in
Fallujah. A U.S. helicopter hits
militants in a
mosque with three
missiles; 40 individuals are killed in the mosque.
Marines and
rebels continue to exchange fire.
(TWEAN)
South Korea announces the deployment of 3,700 soldiers in Iraq by August, despite recent attacks. The augmentation will make it the
coalition's third largest contingent.
(World Tribune)
Coalition forces retake
Kut, meeting little opposition.
US Marines resume their advance into
Fallujah, after a pause to allow
humanitarian supplies to enter the city. An attempt to use the pause to negotiate terms of surrender fails when the representatives from the city fail to show.
Iraq marks the anniversary of
Saddam Hussein's fall with fighting and bloodshed.
Kurds, in the relatively stable north, celebrate with parties and the melting of an ice statue of the ousted dictator.
(Al Jazeera)
Food and
sanitation are allegedly being denied to more than 2500 people who were arrested in
Nepal over the last few days for protesting against the suspension of
democracy.
(Morning Star)
Three European researchers say that if
Greenland's average temperature were to increase by 3 °C (5.4 °F) or more, its massive
ice sheet would melt, gradually swamping coastal communities as seas rise 7 metres (23 feet) over the next 1,000 years. They hypothesize that the upward trend of worldwide
carbon dioxideemissions could cause this.
(Indianapolis Star)
Gunmen shoot down a helicopter during fighting in western
Baghdad.
Rebels threaten to kill and burn a civilian, Thomas Hamill, unless the Alliance troops end their assault on Fallujah by 6 am. The
deadline passes with no word on Hamill's fate.
(Tribune India)
President Bush, praying with U.S. troops on
Easter Sunday at a military base hit hard by hostilities in Iraq, acknowledges that it had been "a tough week" and it is unclear if the violence would ebb soon.
(Reuters)[permanent dead link]
A new Iraqi
battalion refuses to support Coalition forces in the town of Falluja after a command failure which lead to
miscommunication over their role in the area.
(BBC)
Canadian scientists report on a study of
mammals from around the world that the
species with the best-endowed males live in
polar regions, rather than in more equatorial climates.
(Toronto Star)
West Indies captain
Brian Lara sets the highest score in
Test cricket - 400 not out on the third day of the fourth Test against England in Antigua. He makes his 400 in 773 minutes off 582 balls, hitting 43 fours and four sixes.
(BBC)
Hungarian police detain a Hungarian citizen of
Palestinian origin and two
Syrian men who are alleged to have been planning to blow up a
Jewish museum in
Budapest and assassinate Israeli president
Moshe Katsav who arrived to attend the museum's inauguration ceremony.
(HaAretz)
The Australian
Family Court allows a thirteen-year-old child, born female, to start preliminary hormone treatment: the child identifies as being male and has been suffering from
gender dysphoria.
(transcript)(The Australian)
India beats
Pakistan 2-1 in the historic friendship
Test cricket series. This is India's first away win after 11 years and the first against archrivals Pakistan, in Pakistan.
Long-time Canadian
NDPmember of ParliamentSvend Robinson admits that he stole a piece of jewelry at a public sale in what he describes as "a moment of total, utter irrationality." He states he has turned the ring into police, with whom he is cooperating, and that he is putting his career on hold, taking medical leave to obtain psychological help. The auction house later accepted Svend's apology and decided not to press charges, but a special prosecuter was appointed by the government to weigh the decision of whether to prosecute Robinson.
(CBC)
Three planets are discovered via
gravitational microlensing orbiting stars many light years away, including one that is more than three times farther away than the previous record holder.
(Space.com)
Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa submits a report on the constitutional development to NPC, asking Beijing's permission to reform the way HK's legislature and the top leadership are chosen in 2007 and 2008.
Sheikh
Omar Bakri Muhammad says the "life of an unbeliever has no value, it has no sanctity" and states that several
Islamicmilitant groups are planning a
terrorist attack on London, making such an attack inevitable.
(Reuters)
In
Kosovo, a
JordanianUN police officer opens fire upon a convoy of UN police officers killing two female Americans and injuring eleven others. The attack reportedly stemmed from an argument between American and
Jordanian UN police over
Iraq policies.
(BBC)
Ten
Iraqi Kurds and North Africans are arrested by UK police on suspicion of violating the
Terrorism Act 2000. The arrests are made in dawn raids in
Greater Manchester and other parts of the North and Midlands.
(BBC)
The law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell makes public a 463-page report on
accounting and
corporate governance issues affecting
oil giant
Royal Dutch/Shell. The report, prepared at the request of Shell's audit committee, explains how lax standards have allowed the company to vastly overstate the extent of its oil and
natural gas reserves.
(company website)
Three car bombs explode outside police stations in
Basra, killing 68 people and wounding over 100 more.
Iraqi officials blame
suicide bombers for the
terrorism. 23 of the casualties are school children. A fourth car bomb explodes in Zubeir, south of Basra, killing three and wounding four. British soldiers assisting the wounded are pelted with stones, injuring four, two seriously.
(BBC)(NYT)
Ryongchon disaster: at least 154 people are killed and over 1200 are injured, according to the
Red Cross, in a massive explosion after a train carrying explosives came in contact with live electrical wires in
Ryongchon,
North Korea. 1850 homes were destroyed and thousands more damaged.
(BBC)(BBC)(NYT)
Palestinian gunmen attack a police station in the
Gaza Strip, freeing three men arrested for the October 2003 bomb attack against an American
diplomaticconvoy. A fourth man arrested for the bombing refuses to leave the police station.
(AP)
A major fire in downtown
Bangkok leaves thousands of residents homeless. Hundreds of buildings, including several hotels, are destroyed in the area near the Australian and German embassies.
(AP)
A bomb in
Baghdad's
Sadr City market kills 12
Iraqis. In a separate incident, five US soldiers are killed in a rocket attack on a military base north of Baghdad.
(CNN)(AP)
Leaders of Australia and
Bulgaria visited their troops Sunday. Australian Prime Minister
John Howard joined Australian troops in
Baghdad for ceremonies honoring the country's war dead.
Bulgarian President
Georgi Parvanov visited his country's troops two days after a
Bulgarian soldier was shot dead in
Karbala, the sixth from that country to die in the war.
In an open letter to
Tony Blair, 52 former high ranking British diplomats, including former ambassadors to
Iraq and
Israel, condemn the Prime Minister's foreign policy stance in the
Middle East as "doomed to failure" and also condemn
George W. Bush's recent endorsement of
Ariel Sharon's offer to
withdraw settlers from the Gaza Strip while leaving some in the West Bank as "one-sided and illegal and which will cost yet more Israeli and Palestinian blood."[2]
Authorities in
Jordan announce that they have broken up an attempt to set off massive explosions in
Amman, possibly including the release of toxic chemicals. Alleged targets include the office of the Prime Minister, Jordanian intelligence headquarters, and the US embassy. The plot is attributed to
Al Qaida operative
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
(CNN)
Three
Irishmen arrested in
Colombia in August 2001 on charges of training
FARC rebels are acquitted.
(BBC)
Norwegian
chess prodigy
Magnus Carlsen (13) becomes the world's youngest international
Grandmaster (GM), and the second youngest ever, after four wins and four draws out of nine games in the 6th
Dubai Open Chess Championship.
(Aftenposten)
A bomb explosion and gun battle occur in
Damascus,
Syria between security forces and a "terrorist group," in which four people are killed and a vacant
United Nations building badly damaged. The identity and motives of the attackers is unclear but
Islamist militants are the prime suspects.
(BBC).
South African president
Thabo Mbeki is sworn in for a second term after being overwhelmingly reelected on April 14. The event is marred by controversy over the attendance of
Zimbabwean president
Robert Mugabe.[4]
Intense fighting breaks out in
Fallujah as U.S. forces respond to attacks on their positions by
insurgents. Artillery and
AC-130 gunships are used to bombard guerrilla positions, but the number of casualties is as yet unknown.
(BBC)
According to a
CNN/USA Today/
Gallup poll, 71 percent of Iraqis see the U.S. troops in their country as "occupiers" while 19 percent see them as "liberators," although 61 percent say that ousting
Saddam Hussein was worth any hardships they had suffered. Still, 57 percent would like U.S./British forces to leave immediately.
(CNN)(USA Today)
Cable TV giant
Comcast abandons its US$66
bn bid to take over
Disney, citing a lack of interest from the Disney board.
(BBC)
Google announces plans for an
initial public offering to raise as much as US$2.72 billion. The IPO will be unconventional in that it will use an auction process and a complex averaging formula designed to prevent brokers' elite customers from winning more shares than average investors.
(SF Chronicle)(The Age)
Ten U.S. soldiers are killed in three attacks in
Iraq, raising the number of U.S. combat deaths in April to 126. More U.S. troops have been killed this month than during the six weeks of "major combat" in 2003.
(Washington Post)[permanent dead link]
Federal authorities file the first criminal charges under the
CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 against a group that had spammed ads for allegedly worthless "diet patch" products.
(Detroit Free Press)
U.S. newscast Nightline is taken off the air by several stations owned by the
Sinclair Broadcast Group because of its planned airing of a list of
U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. Sinclair claims it is a political ploy, while network
ABC says it is meant as "an expression of respect which simply seeks to honor those who have laid down their lives for this country.
President
George W. Bush expresses his "disgust" at images of
Iraqi prisoners being mistreated by U.S. soldiers: "Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people."[6]
Macedonian officials admit that they staged a bogus gun-battle with "
terrorists" in March 2002 and that they knew the seven men slain had no terrorist connections. Four members of the security forces face murder charges for their staged killing.[7]
