January 22 - AOL Time Warner brings a federal suit against Microsoft seeking damages. The suit alleges that the market for AOL's Netscape Navigator Internet browser was harmed when Microsoft started to give away a competing browser.
March 21 - In Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh along with three other suspects are charged with murder for their part in the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
April 30 - Pakistan: referendum on continuation of military government
May 9 - The 38-day stand-off in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem comes to an end when the Palestinians inside agreed to have 13 suspected militants among them deported to several different countries. The standoff started on April 2.
May 9 - In Kaspiysk, Russia, a remote-controlled bomb explodes during a holiday parade killing 43 and injuring at least 130.
May 10 - FBI agent Robert Hanssen is sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for selling American secrets to Moscow for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds.
July 10 - At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting "The Massacre of the Innocents" is sold for £49.5million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Thomson.
July 13 - A lighting strike sets off the Sour Biscuit Fire in Oregon and northern California, which is left to burn 499,570 acres when finally contained on September 5.
July 15 - So-called "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and for the possession of explosives during the commission of a felony. Lindh agrees to serve 10 years in prison for each of the charges.
July 27 - Air show disaster: A Sukhoi Su-27 fighter crashes at an air show in the Ukraine killing 78 and injuring more than 100 others, the largest air show disaster in history.
August 19 - Iraq disarmament crisis: The U.N. Secretary General rejects Iraq's August 2 proposal as the "wrong work program", and instead recommends that Iraq allow weapons inspectors to return to the country, in accordance with previous U.N. resolutions.
September 5 - The Sour Biscuit Fire in Oregon and northern California, which burned 499,570 acres, is finally contained.
September 12 - Iraq disarmament crisis: U.S. President George W. Bush, addresses the U.N. and challenges its members to confront the "grave and gathering danger" of Iraq or stand aside as the United States and likeminded nations act.
October 2 - Iraq disarmament crisis: The United States Congress passes a joint resolution which explicitly authorizes the President to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate.
November 21- Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal is fined £500 at Slough magistrate court following her conviction of one of her dogs attacking two children in Windsor Great Park.
November 22 - In Nigeria, more than 100 people are killed at an attack aimed at the contestants of the Miss World contest.
November 29 - Brian Henderson retires from reading the news at Sydney, Australiatelevision station TCN-9. At his retirement he held the record for the longest serving television newsreader ever, having hosted the weekend evening bulletins on the station from 1957 until 1964 and the weeknight evening news bulletins on the station from 1964 until he retired in 2002.
December 7 - Iraq disarmament crisis: As required by the recently passed U.N. resolution, Iraq files a 12,000 page weapons declaration with the U.N. Security Council. Although it is supposed to be a complete declaration, it is seen as incomplete by the Security Council and weapons inspectors.
Peace:Jimmy Carter, 39th US president "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."
Literature:Imre Kertész, Hungarian writer "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history".
Economic Sciences:
Daniel Kahneman (Princeton University, USA) "for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty".
Vernon L. Smith (George Mason University, USA) "for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms"
Chemistry:
John B. Fenn (Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, USA) and Koichi Tanaka (Shimadzu Corp, Kyoto, Japan) "for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules"
Kurt Wüthrich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland and The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, USA) "for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution"
Physics:
Raymond Davis Jr (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA) and Masatoshi Koshiba (International Center for Elementary Particle Physics, University of Tokyo, Japan) "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos"
Riccardo Giacconi (Associated Universities Inc., Washington DC, USA) "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources"
Physiology or Medicine:
Sydney Brenner, H. Robert Horvitz and John E. Sulston "for their discoveries concerning genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death"