The World
Al-Qaida's chief of operations in the Persian Gulf, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was captured in an undisclosed foreign country.
NATO welcomed seven new members from the old Soviet bloc and strongly condemned Iraq for its failure to meet United Nations demands to surrender weapons of mass destruction.
Britain's Princess Anne pleaded guilty to failing to control her bull terrier, which bit two children. The first member of the royal family to appear in criminal court since Charles I, she was ordered to pay compensation to the victims and place the dog in training.
South African police found a cache of explosives linked to a militant white separatist group.
About 100 Nigerians were killed in riots touched off by a newspaper comment that suggested the prophet Muhammad might have chosen a wife from among the contestants in the country for the Miss World pageant.
Two black holes were discovered in a single galaxy, raising the possibility that they could spiral together and fundamentally change the universe in a few hundred million years.
United Nations arms inspectors returned to Iraq and met with Iraqi officials who pledged their cooperation and said they would meet a Dec. 8 deadline to declare any weapons of mass destruction, facilities to manufacture them or any related programs.
A leopard, freed by intruders from its compound in a Berlin zoo, killed 10 kangaroos.
European Union foreign ministers tentatively agreed to admit 10 new nations to the 15-nation group on May 1, 2004.
An Italian court overturned the acquittal of former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, 83, for his involvement in a 1979 murder of an investigative journalist, and sentenced him to 24 years in prison.
Terror suspect Imam Samudra, accused of organizing last month's deadly Bali bombing, was arrested as he prepared to board a ferry for the island of Sumatra.
The Nation
Gene scientist J. Craig Venter and his Nobel laureate partner Hamilton O. Smith announced plans to alter a form of life - a single-celled microbe with the minimum number of genes needed to sustain itself - by adding genetic material.
A New Jersey jury convicted Rabbi Fred Neulander, 61, of hiring two men to kill his wife so he could carry on an affair.
Canine familiaris, the common dog, came from East Asia according to two studies, not from the Middle East, arriving in North America 15,000 years ago.
Domino's Pizza founder Thomas S. Monaghan pledged $220 million to build a conservative Catholic university near Naples, Fla.
A group of New York teen-agers are suing McDonald's for damages relating to their weight.
Irish poet Tom Paulin, whose invitation to speak at Harvard was rescinded after he told an Eyptian newspaper that Brooklyn-born Jews who settle in the West Bank "should be shot dead," was reinvited.
One in 10 Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 could not locate the United States on a map of the world in a test of geographic literacy.
John B. Taylor, 38, was convicted of the execution-style killings of five at a New York Wendy's in 2000.
Creation of the Homeland Security department was approved by the Senate on a 90-9 vote.
A federal appeals court approved broad powers to conduct wiretaps that were given to the Justice Department in last year's Patriot Act.
A large stone monument featuring the Ten Commandments, installed in Alabama's judicial building by the state's chief justice, was ordered removed by a federal judge who said it violated the separation of church and state.
A baby sitter in Mississippi who passed out at an interstate rest stop was charged with drunken driving after a 7-year-old, one of five children in her car, dialed 911 on a cell phone.
Women hold 15.7 percent of corporate officer posts at large U.S. companies, up from 8.7 percent in 1995, according to a report by a New York research firm.
Ruth Lilly, 87, heir to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune, gave $100 million to Poetry, a small literary journal that once rejected several of her poems.
An investigation of previously closed medical records found that President John F. Kennedy took a variety of pain killers, anti-anxiety medication, stimulants and sleeping pills during his years in office.
The Region
City police and federal agents seized chemicals used to make the drug PCP - an amount valued between $50 million and $100 million - from a house on Liberty Heights Avenue, one of the city's biggest such busts.
Maryland U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio designated two new assistants to handle firearms violations and asked Baltimore authorities to send him 30 new cases from high-crime areas.
Four Baltimore police officers were wounded by shots fired during a drug raid on a north Baltimore townhouse that netted six plastic bags of marijuana and an ounce of cocaine. Lewis Cauthhorne, 26, who said he thought he was defending his family from intruders, was charged with attempted murder.
Christopher Harn, a former employee of an off-track betting service, pleaded guilty to fraud charges, admitting that he rigged the Breeder's Cup Pick Six bet that had a payoff of more than $3 million for Derrick Davis of Baltimore, who also faces charges along with Glen DaSilva of New York.
Glenwood Freeman, who eluded capture for five years before he was identified in a traffic stop in Richmond, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 1996 killing of his wife, Tina Marie Williams, in their Catonsville apartment.
The developer of the oft-delayed Ritz Carlton hotel in the Inner Harbor said the project is back on track.
Black & Decker said it will close its Easton plant and send its 1,300 jobs to cheaper workers, mainly in Mexico.
A Pikesville family - father, mother and two children - were charged with running an assembly line in their basement that turned out modified cable television boxes designed to cheat cable system operators.
Baltimore County police arrested Darren Lyndell Powell, 36, and charged him with the 1982 rape of a Towson schoolteacher, using the same DNA evidence that freed Bernard Webster, who served 20 years in jail for the crime.
Francis M. Zito, 43, the mentally ill man who was sentenced to death for murdering two Eastern Shore police officers who came to his Centreville trailer investigating a complaint of loud music, died of cancer.
Quote
"You have a legacy. You left $480,000,000 due for this year, $1,700,000,000 for next year. You double-crossed your lieutenant governor. But outside that, you're all right."
State Comptroller William Donald Schaefer, addressing Gov. Parris N. Glendening.