December 25, 2003

• Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf survives a suicide bomber attack on his motorcade, the second attempt to assassinate him in two weeks.
• Following Beagle 2's expected landing, US probe Mars Odyssey (already in Martian orbit) listens for the lander's distinctive musical callsign. A further scan for the lander is conducted using the Jodrell Bank radio telescope. No signal is detected.
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
• An Israeli helicopter gunship attacks a car in Gaza City, killing Islamic Jihad commander Mekled Hameid and two fellow militants, together with two bystanders.
• A suicide-bomber strikes a bus stop Tel Aviv, killing four civilians and himself.
• Israel announces closure of the West Bank and Gaza.
• A UK lab confirms the presence of BSE in samples taken from a cow in Washington Mexico joins the list of countries which have banned imports of US beef.
• Reports emerge of a major leak of natural gas in a gas field near the south-western Chinese city of Chongqing. Over 100 people are believed dead and up to 40,000 people have been evacuated from the area surrounding the leak.
• A Boeing 727 of United Transit Airlines originating in the Guinean capital, Conakry, stopping in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and bound for Beirut, clips a building during takeoff and crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off Benin. Over 100 people die, most of them Lebanese.