On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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Takefuji, one of Japan's largest consumer loan companies, has its debt rating lowered by Moody's Investors Service, which cites arrest of company's chairman Yasuo Takei; Takei was arrested Dec 2 on suspicion of ordering illegal wiretaps, has since resigned; Moody's says arrest hurt Takefuji's reputation; graph (S)
The title of Robert Altman's likable new film could be an appropriate choice for any of his most important movies, from "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" to "Kansas City." Many of these pictures invite us to eavesdrop on a group of characters busily talking among themselves, sounding like nervous, supportive actors revving up for a performance before the curtain rises. "Company," which follows a Chicago-based dance troupe through a few months of its regular season, with the clashes and ego-bruising that accompanies the performances, is enjoyably lithe and droll, yet somehow almost water soluble. The movie, which uses members of the Joffrey Ballet, almost seems to dissolve onscreen before your eyes. Mr. Altman and the screenwriter Barbara Turner have too astringent a perspective to cheapen the picture with thrashing soap opera; the few attempts to create competitive tension in the film dissipate even faster than other elements. Such choices mean that this movie lacks a center. — Elvis Mitchell
Magnitude of Parmalat's suspected losses has provoked outrage across Europe; that Parmalat's auditors failed to detect vast fraud over such long period has left corporate governance experts in Europe stupefied; Europe's patchwork of national laws and business practices may make coordinated response difficult, no matter how much European nations want to clamp down; European Union is moving to harmonize its standards on financial reporting and auditing by 2005, as part of effort to turn much of Europe into transparent financial market; photo (M)
Sales of digital cameras surpassed those of film cameras for first time last year, but film still has adherents who refuse to switch; reasons include sentiment and concern about cost; some also relish surprise element and eschew instant gratification of digital; photos (M)
Holiday season, generally slow time in New York real estate market, is humming along, with even multi-million dollar apartments being snapped up in short order; bidding wars are common as mortgage rates remain low, and there is seemingly no end in upward march of prices; photo; drawing; graph shows prices from 2001 to 2003 for luxury apartments (M)
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of December 24, 2003, covering December 25, 2003.
Ruben Studdard
Alicia Keys
Various Artists
Toby Keith
Josh Groban
2003Nicholas Mavroules, American politician (born 1929)[†]
Nicholas James Mavroules was an American Democratic Party politician from Massachusetts. He served as Mayor of Peabody, Massachusetts for a decade, then represented Peabody and much of the surrounding North Shore region in the United States House of Representatives from 1979 until 1993. In 1993, he pleaded guilty to 15 counts of racketeering and extortion and later served 15 months in prison.
2003UTA Flight 141, a Boeing 727-223, crashes at the Cotonou Airport in Benin, killing 141 people.[†]
UTA Flight 141 was a scheduled international passenger flight operated by Guinean regional airline Union des Transports Africains de Guinée, flying from Conakry to Dubai with stopovers in Benin, Libya and Lebanon. On Christmas Day 2003, the Boeing 727–223 operating the flight struck a building and crashed into the Bight of Benin while rolling for take off from Cotonou, killing 141 people. The crash of Flight 141 is the deadliest crash in Benin's aviation history.
2003The ill-fated Beagle 2 probe, released from the Mars Express spacecraft on December 19, stops transmitting shortly before its scheduled landing.[†]
The Beagle 2 was an inoperative British Mars lander that was transported by the European Space Agency's 2003 Mars Express mission. It was intended to conduct an astrobiology mission that would have looked for evidence of past life on Mars.
In 2003, the world population was approximately 6,420,361,634 people[†]