Portal:Current events/2004 March 18

March 18, 2004 (Thursday)

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf reports that his soldiers have surrounded a cadre of Al-Qaida men located in Waziristan, Pakistan, that was protecting Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command for the organization.
Howard Dean announces plans to form Democracy for America, a political organization intended to help progressive candidates holding similar views. (CNN)
Indian government officials warn that rebels from northeast India based in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan are planning major attacks to disrupt upcoming national elections. (Reuters)
Unrest in Kosovo: NATO announces that it will reinforce its Kosovo Force, following ethnic unrest there that has killed at least 31 people over the past two days. More Serbian Orthodox Churches have been set ablaze by Albanians and violence has continued in and around Kosovo Serb enclaves. Russia and Serbia and Montenegro call for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council. United Nations officials attempt to restore order in the province and blame the unrest on nationalist extremists on both sides. More demonstrations have taken place across Serbia, so far without the violence seen the previous day. (Washington Post) Archived 2012-10-19 at the Wayback Machine (BBC) (B92)
Near-Earth asteroid 2004 FH made the second-closest approach of an asteroid ever recorded. At 22:08 UTC it passed 43,000 km above Earth's surface. (NASA-JPL) Archived 2017-03-08 at the Wayback Machine
Cleanup work at Love Canal has been completed, federal officials said. The EPA says it should be taken off the Superfund list. Environmental activist Lois Gibbs said the Bush administration was seeking to deflect criticism from a March 11 Senate vote against reauthorizing an expired user fee on corporations to fund environmental cleanup. (NYT)
US Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia refuses to recuse himself from a case – involving his friend Dick Cheney – considering whether the White House must release information about private meetings of Cheney's energy task force stating that duck hunting and fishing trip "was not an intimate setting" and that the energy case was never discussed. (SC)
The United States House of Representatives votes unanimously to double the reward for Osama bin Laden's capture to US$50 million. (CNN)