People in the News, 2003
Which of these individuals is NOT a member of the Iraqi Governing Council?
- Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf was the audacious Iraqi information minister under Saddam Hussein. Ahmed Chalabi, president of the Iraqi National Congress, and Jalal Talabani, Kurdish leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), are both on the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council.
Who became the controversial president of the European Union in 2003?
- Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister of Italy, created a diplomatic furor on the day he became president of the European Union (a rotating position) when he compared a German legislator to a Nazi concentration-camp guard. Gerhard Schr?der is prime minister of Germany and Jacques Chirac is president of France.
Who is the current commander of military forces in Iraq?
- Gen. John Abizaid replaced Tommy Franks, who retired in July as the commander of allied forces in the Persian Gulf. Gen. Wesley Clark is the former supreme allied commander of NATO during the 1999 war in Kosovo. He is currently a Democratic presidential candidate.
Which of these figures is NOT known for his egregious journalistic ethics?
- Eric Rudolph, long-time fugitive on the Ten Most Wanted list, was apprehended this year. He is accused of the bombings of Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park in 1996. Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass are both notorious fabricators of news stories. Blair caused scandal and upheaval at the New York Times, including the downfall of editors Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd; Glass, whose deceptions took place a few years ago at the New Republic, published his autobiographical novel The Fabulist this year and was the subject of the 2003 film Shattered Glass.
This reformist political leader and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was placed under house arrest yet again in 2003.
- In May 1990 elections in Myanmar (formerly Burma), the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won in a landslide. The military junta refused to recognize the results, and since then has placed Suu Kyi intermittently under house arrest in an unsuccessful attempt to sap her enormous popular support. In Spring 2003, she was again arrested. Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Hu Jintau became China's president in March, succeeding Jiang Zemin. Katrina Leung, a prominent Chinese-American businesswoman, was indicted in May on espionage-related charges.
Which of these individuals spoke out against the Bush administration's claims that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from Niger in an effort to pursue a nuclear weapons program?
- Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate the accusation that Iraq sought uranium from the small African nation. Although he reported that the claim was unsubstantiated, the allegation continued to be repeated by a number of top administration officials and made its way into the president's 2003 State of the Union address. Wilson went public with his report in July 2003. Stephen Hadley, deputy national security adviser, took some of the blame in July for the unsubstantiated claim in President Bush's State of the Union address. David Kelly, British weapons inspector, was caught in the crossfire between the BBC and the Blair government regarding the alleged "sexed-up" dossier justifying the war in Iraq. The unrelenting public scrutiny led him to suicide.
Which of the following was NOT a reformist South American leader elected in 2003?
- Brazilian diplomat S?rgio Vieira de Mello, was the UN special envoy to Iraq who was killed in August when a suicide bomber demolished UN headquarters in Baghdad. Argentinian president Nestor Kirchner and Brazilian president Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva both took office in 2003 and have pursued reformist agendas.
Which of these leaders was NOT forced to resign in 2003?
- Liberian president Charles Taylor was forced into exile in August; Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze was forced from office in November. Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria was reelected in April.
Which of these business titans was NOT tarnished by scandal this year?
- Steve Case resigned as chairman of AOL Time Warner amid falling stock prices—ending an honorable, if not sucessful, tenure. Donald Carty, on the other hand, resigned as CEO of American Airlines after it was discovered that he asked ordinary employees to make financial sacrifices while rewarding his top executives with lavish retention bonuses. Richard Grasso resigned as chairman and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange when his over-the-top compensation package of $140 million came to light.
Which judge refused to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Supreme Court House?
- "Roy's Rock" was removed in August; Roy Moore was himself removed from office in November for "willfully and publicly" defying the law by not removing the statue. Charles Pickering and Miguel Estrada were two of President Bush's judicial nominees in 2003.
