Portal:Current events/2003 August 10

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August 10, 2003 (2003-08-10) (Sunday)
  • One hundred thousand people attend a rally in the French countryside to condemn next month's round of trade liberalisation talks being held under auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Cancún in Mexico.[1]
  • Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens gives British police in London "shoot-on-sight" orders to deal with possible suicide bombers as expectations rise of an Al-Qaeda attack on the British capital.[2]
  • War on Terrorism: The Sunday Times reports that Al-Qaeda terrorists have infiltrated Iraq from surrounding Arab countries and have aligned themselves with former intelligence agents of Saddam Hussein to fight the Coalition forces. Their attacks have killed Coalition soldiers and Iraqi police officers, among others.[3]
  • Pope John Paul II urges Catholics to pray for rain in Europe as the heat wave continues. The heat wave in Britain reaches 100 Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius) at Heathrow, for the first time in history.[4] Warnings of avalanches are issued in the Alps, as mountain glaciers melt.
  • Liberian President and convicted war criminal Charles Taylor, who is to step down tomorrow, has appealed to rebels to "submit to the democratic process'". He also accuses the United States of funding the rebels who have besieged the capital, Monrovia, for a week.[5]
  • The British Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith demands that Prime Minister Tony Blair apologise for the comments of his press secretary, Tom Kelly, in which Kelly compared Dr. David Kelly, the BBC source who took his own life after his identity was revealed by the Ministry of Defence, to the fictional Walter Mitty character.[6]
  • A 16-year-old Israeli was killed and five people were injured in Hezbollah shelling of the northern Israeli town of Shlomi. Israeli planes attacked Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response. Some sources claim Hezbollah's attack was a response to Israel's car-bomb assassination of Hezbollah member Ali Hussein Saleh in Beirut on August 3 in which two passersby were injured.[7]
  • While retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his successor, Archbishop Njongonkulu Winston Ndungane, fail to see what "all the fuss" is over the ordination of a gay bishop, other African Anglicans suggest that their churches may sever relations with the American dioceses that supported the election of a gay priest as bishop if what they called the "path of deviation" is not changed.[8][9]
  • The highest temperature ever recorded in the UK – 38.5 °C (101.3 °F) at Brogdale near Faversham in Kent.[10] It is the first time the UK has recorded a temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
  1. ^ Schofield, Hugh (2003-08-10). "Europe | French rally against WTO talks". BBC News. Retrieved 2015-09-26.
  2. ^ [1] Archived September 29, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-02-18. Retrieved 2017-09-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 2017-09-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. ^ "Taylor gives farewell address in Liberia - RTÉ News". Rte.ie. 2003-08-10. Retrieved 2015-09-26.
  6. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 2017-09-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2004-10-22. Retrieved 2019-07-29.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  8. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 2017-09-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  9. ^ [2][dead link]
  10. ^ "Climate summaries". Met Office. Archived from the original on 2003-02-20. Retrieved 2015-09-26.
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