On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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New York City pays $133,000 per ambulance, despite city's strangled budget and fiscal crisis, with high price and elaborate and detailed contract specifications driving off most contractors; only two companies bid on contract, with Horton Emergency Vehicles submitting winning bid; photos (M)
Russia's Yukos oil company says profit increased 26 percent in second quarter; profit rose to $955 million from $758 million year earlier; sales soared 49 percent, to $3.83 billion; operating expenses also increased, rising 40 percent, to $494 million, from year ago; crude oil production rose to 65 million barrels from 55 million in quarter last year; authorities say Yukos's chief executive Mikhail B Khodorkovsky will be interrogated again as part of continuing investigation into company; Russian authorities on Oct 17 also filed chages against shareholder Vasily Shakhnovsky for tax evasion, first large Yukos shareholder to be charged, Platon Lebedev, was arrested in July on charges of theft of state property in 1994 privatization deal, and remains in jail; analysts have pointed to prosecutors' probes of Yukos as example of Pres Vladimir V Putin's heavy-handed use of judicial system to punish opponents like Khodorkovsky, Russia's wealthiest man; photo (M)
New York Giants are 2-4 so far this season; prepare to face undefeated Minnesota Vikings (M)
Latest profit figures from corporate America pump up investors' hopes, Market Place column; corporate earnings are set to have their best quarter since spring of 2000, up an estimated 21 percent over last year's third quarter; companies' bottom lines are helped by strong consumer spending, weakening dollar and further costcutting; question is whether this earnings performance can push stock market much higher after its eight-month rally; analysts expect earnings growth to be only about half as strong in first three quarters of next year, but many investors seem to be responding to latest company reports by buying stocks in same speculative way they did at end of 1990's (M)
John A Muhammad, facing capital murder charges in last fall's sniper shootings in Washington, DC, area, gives his opening statement to jury after firing his lawyers and taking control of his own defense; makes clear that his goal is to demonstrate his innocence of any crimes and to portray himself as victim of unjust prosecution built on guesswork; pretrial motions and remarks of his former court-appointed lawyers suggested they would focus more on avoiding capital punishment for Muhammad than on winning acquittal; decision by Circuit Court Judge LeRoy F Millette Jr of Virginia Beach to allow him to represent himself comes at start of dramatic first day of arguments and testimony in which prosecution outlines extensive circumstantial evidence linking Muhammad and Lee Malvo, his accused accomplice, to 10 fatal shootings; photos (M)
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of October 15, 2003, covering October 21, 2003.
OutKast
Bad Boy's Da Band
Sting
Dido
Dave Matthews
2003Louise Day Hicks, American politician (born 1916)[†]
Anna Louise Day Hicks was an American politician and lawyer from Boston, Massachusetts, best known for her staunch opposition to desegregation in Boston public schools, and especially to court-ordered busing, in the 1960s and 1970s. A longtime member of Boston's school board and city council, she served one term in the United States House of Representatives, succeeding Speaker of the House John W. McCormack.
2003Luis A. Ferré, Puerto Rican engineer and politician, 3rd Governor of Puerto Rico (born 1904)[†]
Don Luis Alberto Ferré Aguayo was a Puerto Rican engineer, industrialist, politician, philanthropist, and patron of the arts. He was the governor of Puerto Rico from 1969 to 1973. He was the founder of the New Progressive Party, which advocates for Puerto Rico to become a state of the United States of America. He is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
2003Elliott Smith, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1969)[†]
Steven Paul Smith, known as Elliott Smith, was an American musician and singer-songwriter. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and lived much of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he gained popularity. Smith's primary instrument was the guitar, though he also played piano, clarinet, bass guitar, drums, and harmonica. He had a distinctive vocal style in his solo career after Heatmiser, characterized by his "whispery, spiderweb-thin delivery", and often used multi-tracking to create vocal layers, textures, and harmonies that were usually finger picked and recorded with tape.
In 2003, the world population was approximately 6,420,361,634 people[†]