The Modesto Bee from Modesto, California • 3

The Modesto Bee YEAR IN REVIEW SUNDAY DECEMBER 29 2002 A-3' A CHRONOLOGY ifcfcUKltV mtW The color-coded terrorism warning system was unveiled in March High Risk or TERRORIST ATTACKS Significant Risk of Terrorist Attacks LOW THE ASSOCIATED PRESS by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge Many fearful events of 2002 kept nerves on edge Sniper economic woes and terrorism concerns let sense of insecurity prevail By DAVID CRARY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Month after month for all too many Americans 2002 was the year of living anxiously Fears of terrorism lingered then intensified toward end as bombers slaughtered holiday makers overseas and the FBI warned vaguely of at home War with Iraq seemed close at hand its consequences unforeseeable Deadly sniper fire terrified millions living near the capital spreading jitters through schoolyards and shopping malls Across the country child abductions mass layoffs and a topsy-turvy stock market worsened the collective uneasiness Sex-abuse and corruption scandals eroded trust in religious and corporate leaders people to feel an increase in anxiety over the past year is absolutely normal and said psychotherapist Jerilyn Ross president of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America to live on the edge become for many people almost a way of life" The most pervasive anxiety was a sense of insecurity heightened after the first anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks by renewed threats from an unseen Osama bin Laden and terrorist strikes ranging from Yemen to Indonesia to Kenya Never before had Americans had to A CHRONOLOGY July 1: US planes bomb a village in central Afghanistan after American forces came under fire according to US officials Afghans said the villagers were celebrating a wedding July 4: Gunman opens fire at Israel's El Al airline ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport Three people die including the gunman July 6: Gunmen assassinate Afghan Vice President Abdul Qadir July 10: Senate approves harsh new penalties for corporate fraud July 14: A man tries to assassinate French President Jacques Chirac during Bastille Day parade July 15: John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to two felonies July 27: Ukrainian air force fighter jet slices through crowd of spectators at Kiev air show killing at least 78 July 28: Nine trapped coal miners are rescued in Pennsylvania July 29: Amtrak train derails outside Washington injuring 90 Aug 6: Year-old Guatemalan twins joined at the head are separated Aug 11: US Airways files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Aug 13: American Airlines says it will eliminate 7000 jobs and cut flights Sept 3: Bush administration says it has secret information supporting its claims that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is close to developing nuclear weapons Sept 11: President Bush joins the nation in remembering it began and who fell in the terrorist attacks one year earlier Sept 26: Former controller of WorldCom pleads guilty to securities-fraud charges Oct 3: Five people are gunned down in the Washington suburbs in 16 hours beginning the hunt for the sniper Oct 4: American Taliban Lindh receives 20-year sentence Oct 10: West Coast dockworkers return to ports crammed with cargo after lockout that ends after president intervenes Oct 11: Congress approves use of America's military might against Iraq Former President Carter wins Nobel Peace Prize Oct 12: Bomb destroys a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali killing nearly 200 people Oct 15: ImClone Systems founder Sam Waksal decides to plead guilty in insidertrading scandal Oct 23: Gunmen seize crowded Moscow theater taking hundreds hostage Oct 24: Authorities arrest Army veteran John Allen Muhammad and a teen-ager in connection with the sniper attacks Oct 25: Sen Paul Wellstone dies in plane crash just 1 1 days before the election Oct 26: Commandos striking behind clouds of disabling gas bring a sudden bloody end to the hostage nightmare in Moscow Oct 28: An American diplomat is assassinated in front of his house in Amman Jordan in the first such attack on a US diplomat in decades Nov 1: Federal judge approves most provisions of antitrust settlement between Microsoft Corp and Justice Department Nov 6: Bush and the GOP savor sweeping election victories and begin sketching an agenda for a Republican-controlled Congress Nov 11: Residents clean up after twisters and thunderstorms kill at least 35 people in five states Nov 12: In an audiotaped message a voice purported to be that of Osama bin Laden praises terrorist strikes in Bali and Moscow and threatens Western nations over any attack on Iraq Nov 18: UN arms inspectors return to Iraq after four-year hiatus Nov 19: Oil tanker carrying 20 million gallons of fuel oil breaks in two and sinks in Atlantic Ocean threatening environmental catastrophe along Spanish coastline Nov 25: Bush signs legislation creating Department of Homeland Security Nov 28: Suicide bombers in Kenya kill 12 people at an Israeli-owned beach hotel and two missiles narrowly miss an airliner carrying Israelis who had been on holiday Dec 1: Fire kills 47 injures 12 in overcrowded Caracas Venezuela club Dec 5: One of the worst ice- and snowstorms in years leaves millions without electricity in the Carolinas Dec 6: Bush pushes Treasury Secretary Paul and economic adviser Larry Lindsey from their posts Dec 7: Iraq hands over its long-awaited arms declaration to United Nations denying it has doomsday weapons Dec 9: United Airlines' filing for bankruptcy protection is biggest in aviation history Dec 13: Cardinal Bernard Law resigns as Boston archbishop because of Catholic priest sex-abuse scandal Dec 15: Former Vice President Al Gore says he won't run for president in 2004 Dec 19: Secretary of State Colin Powell terms Iraq in breach" of UN disarmament resolution Dec 20: Trent Lott resigns as Senate Republican leader after racially insensitive comments spark furor Dec 22: North Korea says it has begun removing UN seals and surveillance cameras from nuclear facilities US says they could yield weapons within months Dec 23: Senate Republicans elect Bill Frist as their new leader Dec 26: West Virginia man winner of $3149 million Powerball lottery jackpot believed to be the richest single-ticket prize in history Dec 27: North Korea orders expulsion of UN nuclear inspectors says it will reactivate lab that could be used to extract jLyapons-grade plutonium Jan 1: Euro becomes legal tender for much of Europe Jan 2: American bombs kill intelligence chief Jan 4: First American soldier killed in eastern Afghanistan Jan 18: Israel retaliates for Palestinian attack on Jewish confirmation party by destroying Palestinian government headquarters Jan 22: Kmart Corp files for Chapter 1 1 bankruptcy protection Jan 25: Thomas Junta sentenced to up to 1 0 years in prison for beating another man to death at their hockey practice Jan 28: Hamid Karzai becomes first Afghan leader to visit Washington in 39 years Jan 29: In his first State of the Union address President Bush says terrorists still threaten America and warns of axis of evil" of North Korea Iran and Iraq Feb 5: Federal grand jury indicts John Walker Lindh on suspicion of conspiring with the Taliban to kill Americans Feb 8: Winter Olympics open in Salt Lake City Feb 14: France asks for investigation into Olympic figure-skating pairs event after saying its judge voted for Russians under duress Feb 15: Canadian skaters who came in second to Russians will also receive a gold medal French judge suspended indefinitely Feb 21: State Department declares Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl dead in terrorist attack in Pakistan March 1: Archdiocese of Boston agrees to give prosecutors list of people allegedly molested by priests and details of incidents March 4: Nine American soldiers killed 40 wounded in Afghanistan Israel kills 16 Palestinians in retaliatory raids including wife and children of Hamas militant March 6: Federal regulators approve proposed $22 billion merger of Hewlett-Packard Co and Compaq Computer Corp March 7: House passes bill cutting taxes and extending unemployment benefits March 11: Two columns of light at ground zero commemorate Sept 11 attacks March 14: Government gets first indictment in Enron collapse by charging Arthur Andersen accounting firm with obstruction of justice March 21: Jurors in San Francisco convict woman whose dogs killed a neighbor by ripping open her throat March 28: Arab world agrees on peace plan that offers Israel normal relations in exchange for full withdrawal from war-won lands and a Palestinian state April 1: Capture of al-Qaida's top surviving operational commander is one of most significant accomplishments in war on terrorism officials and experts say April 4: Bush urges Israel to pull out of Palestinian cities and dismisses Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a failed leader April 14: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returns to office two days after being ousted and arrested by his military April 15: At least four US soldiers die in Afghanistan when rockets accidentally blow up Pope John Paul II summons American cardinals to Rome for talk about sex-abuse scandals in US church April 18: An American F-16 pilot in Afghanistan apparently mistakes Canadian soldiers for enemy forces and drops a bomb killing four and wounding eight April 24: American Roman Catholic leaders agree to make it easier to remove priests guilty of sexually abusing minors but stop short of zero-tolerance policy April 27: Rival motorcycle gangs clash in Nevada casino three die (including men from Hughson and Stockton) and 12 are wounded May 10: Israel ends its 39-day siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem after 13 Palestinian militants are flown into exile May 14: NATO and Russia reach historic agreement to combat common security threats in the post-Sept 1 1 era May 24: Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin sign the biggest arms-reduction treaty in history May 30: Ceremony marks end of cleanup at ground zero June 4: Bush says CIA and FBI failed to communicate adequately before Sept 1 1 Congress begins closed hearings into pre-Sept 11 intelligence lapses Roman Catholic bishops call for zero-tolerance policy against priests who molest children in the future and a two-strikes policy for those guilty of past abuse June 7: Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel is convicted of beating Greenwich Conn neighbor Martha Moxley to death in 1975 when they were both 15 years old June 14: American Catholic bishops adopt policy that will bar sexually abusive clergy from face-to-face contact with parishioners but keep them in the priesthood June 15: Arthur Andersen is convicted of obstruction of justice in the Enron case June 16: Forest Service worker is accused of starting a campfire that sparked a blaze in Colorado's Pike National Forest June 23: Two mammoth wildfires threaten to join a 50-mile-long line of flames and bum into Show Low Ariz population 7700 June 26: WorldCom Inc the No 2 long-distance company discloses what could be the biggest case of crooked accounting in US history Sept 11 attack on the Pentagon and the mailing of anthrax-tainted letters have gotten so far out of our Zaring said one nationally is saying OK things are going to be Instead saying Many Roman Catholic parents were unnerved and angered by the flood of disclosures about sex abuse of children committed by priests in dioceses across the country Most unsettling for many Catholics was a loss of trust in bishops who sheltered the abusive priests Corporate executives and investment analysts also suffered from a loss of trust as Americans struggled to keep abreast of a dizzying string of business scandals and embarrassments For nearly 1 million unemployed workers nationwide the year-end holidays promised to be particularly bleak Congress adjourned for the year without extending jobless benefits that expired Saturday On top of other sources of stress some regions were tormented by natural disasters drought and wildfires in the West and South tornadoes that killed 36 people in Tennessee Ohio Alabama Mississippi and Pennsylvania in November Although mobile-home residents suffered disproportionately from the twisters Jo Ann Sherman of Lebanon Tenn said she tempted to invest in a storm shelter for her double-wide trailer Her fatalism seemed appropriate in a year of worries it's going to get she said going to get On the Net: wwwadaaorg headed into another critical election pitting a hawk Prime Minister Ariel Sharon against a dovish challenger Amram Mitzna while some younger Palestinian leaders for the first time questioned the wisdom of continuing an uprising more than 2 years old The second half of the year was dominated by fears of a war with Iraq Arab governments feared it would destabilize the entire region Anti-US sentiment bubbled in the streets of Arab cities In Latin America Brazil the powerhouse took a historic step away from centrist rule as leftist Luiz Inacio Lula was elected president Economic instability or the threat of it hung over many nations as Argentina buckled under massive debt Alvaro Uribe became president of Colombia with a promise to defeat leftist FARC guerrillas and drug barons Maverick President Hugo Chavez clung to power in Venezuela after being briefly toppled in April In Africa the AIDS epidemic continued its merciless ravages and drought floods and bad government raised anew the threat of famine Ivory Coast once held up as a model faced civil war and other conflicts sputtered on unresolved And yet the poorest continent saw signs of hope Wars in Congo Angola Somalia and Somalia died down as belligerents turned to the negotiating table The African Union a new grouping of 53 nations promised an era of peace and prosperity are starting a new chapter in the history of our South African President Thabo Mbeki said live under an indefinite terrorism alert The new color-coded system which mostly stayed at yellow for briefly shifting to orange provided little reassurance Health officials publicly debated the feasibility of mass smallpox inoculations in the event of a bioterrorism attack After a near-hit on an Israeli plane leaving Kenya intelligence experts acknowledged that airliners were vulnerable to strikes by surface-to-air missiles available from arms traffickers Around military bases and in the homes of reservists families prepared for a possible war with Iraq Thousands of part-time soldiers and their loved ones braced for seemingly imminent call-ups Random shootings disrupted life For all the uncertainty regarding Iraq professional soldiers were more steeled for that conflict than civilians in the Washington area were for the sniper shootings that persisted for three nerve-racking weeks in October Across populous normally placid suburbs in Maryland and Virginia locked-down schools canceled football games and outdoor recess Starbucks outlets removed sidewalk seating and gas stations strung up tarps to shield customers Only with the arrest of two suspects at a highway rest stop did the fears subside been a really difficult year for our said Stefanie Zaring deputy executive director of the Mental Health Association of Montgomery County home to several of the victims in the shootings She noted that the region already had been shaken by the Party of Joerg Haider suffered a major defeat and party which had done well in elections plunged into disarray In Germany Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder narrowly won re-election only to see his tenuous popularity crumble as the largest economy teetered German ties with Washington nose-dived after Berlin stridently opposed war with Iraq The terrorism Europeans feared all year struck in Moscow in October when a theater siege by Chechen rebels ended in a raid by special forces that left at least 129 hostages dead Asia conflicts boil India and Pakistan continued their nuclear-tipped standoff exacerbated by the bleeding sore of the disputed territory of Kashmir North Korea revealed that it had nuclear weapons Afghanistan free of the Taliban after a US-led campaign struggled to escape the clutches of rival warlords Terrorism hit Asia when a bomb wrecked a nightclub in the Indonesian resort of Bali in October killing nearly 200 people mainly young Western tourists China experienced its first orderly regime change since the communist revolution of 1949 when Hu Jintao replaced Jiang Zemin as Communist Party general secretary in November It was part of a long-planned hand-over of power to a younger generation It was a year of crisis and stalemate in the Middle East battle with the Palestinians deepened with a cycle of suicide bombings and Israeli military sweeps Israel World ends year fraught with tension over shaky economies threat of war Crises grip continents but rays of hope shone too By BARRY RENFREW THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LONDON For most of the world 2002 was a gloomy tense year as nations struggled with slumping economies while watching nervously for the twin threats of terrorist attacks and war with Iraq From Europe to the Middle East and Asia many hoped the United States would not attack Iraq but resigned themselves to the possibility Only Britain and a few allies gave strong support to tough stance on Iraq The world mourned the anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks The year in Europe was a search for expansion and the healing of old divisions NATO invited seven of its former communist opponents to join as the scars of the Cold War healed The 15-nation European Union moved to add 10 more European domestic politics were less harmonious The far right appeared to be making unprecedented gains as Europeans reacted fearfully to a flood of illegal immigrants Jean-Marie Le Pen stunned the world by winning a place in the runoff of the French presidential election even though he was then thrashed by incumbent Jacques Chirac Holland suffered its first political assassination when a rising star of the anti-immigration camp Pym Fortuyn was gunned down By end the far right appeared on the jjtn as far-right Freedom.