December 22, 2003

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[edit] December 22, 2003

• After getting FCC approval on December 19, News Corporation Ltd. completed a US$7.6 billion cash and stock deal to buy control of Hughes Electronics and its DirecTV satellite television division from General Motors. [1]
• The People's Republic of China plans to peg its currency, the yuan, to a basket of ten currencies instead of only the U.S. dollar, according to its state press. [2]
• Parmalat is likely to declare "controlled administration" as Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said the government would intervene and "above all save the industrial part of the company and jobs". [3]
• Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher is assaulted by Palestinians during prayer at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Mr. Maher was taken to an Israeli hospital for observation as a result of the incident after being treated at the scene by the Magen David Adom. After several hours care in the hospital, he was escorted to his airplane by an Israeli cardiologist and paramedic. [4] [5]
• A list of people who have declined a British honour was leaked to The Sunday Times. The list includes David Bowie, David Hockney, Aldous Huxley, Nigella Lawson, and Harold Pinter. [6], [7], [8]
• The Gulf Cooperation Council announces that they will revise school textbooks and remove from them material describing followers of other religions as infidels and enemies of Islam. [9]
• SCO v. IBM:
  • SCO claims in a press release to be sending DMCA notification letters alleging copyright infringement [10][11]
  • Linus Torvalds says, in a post to the Linux kernel mailing list, "... I think we can totally _demolish_ the SCO claim that these 65 files were somehow "copied". They clearly are not." [12]
  • Novell has also registered their claim to the copyright of original UNIX source code, effectively challenging SCO's registration of the same code [13] [14]
• An earthquake strikes near San Simeon, California, at 19:15 UTC (11:15 PST). The quake registers a 6.5 magnitude on the Richter Magnitude Scale, and causes two deaths from the collapse of a building in the town of Paso Robles. [15],[16]
• The Philippines declares a calamity in a southern province after floods killed up to 209 people. [17]