Portal:Current events/2005 December 2

Current events of December 2, 2005 (2005-12-02) (Friday)

• About 4,000 military history enthusiasts from 23 countries gathered at Slavkov u Brna in the Czech Republic to re-enact the Battle of Austerlitz on the 200th anniversary of the epic battle between the First French Empire, the Austrian Empire and Imperial Russia. (BBC) (BBC) (AP via CBS) (AP via ABC) (Austerlitz2005.com)
• Proposed internet domain .xxx for pornography has been dropped shortly before the domain was set to receive approval. (techtree)
• Conflict in Iraq: 10 U.S. Marines are killed following an insurgent roadside bomb attack in Falluja. (BBC)
• Scientists in Gabon and the Republic of Congo discover that three species of fruit bat serve as animal reservoirs for the Ebola virus. The virus probably first spread from animal to human in 1976 by local hunters eating the bats. (Nature) (LA Times)
• Hurricane Epsilon strengthens from a tropical storm to become the record breaking fourteenth hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. (CNN) (Reuters via Yahoo)
• Kenneth Boyd becomes the 1000th person to be executed in the United States since the re-introduction of capital punishment in 1976. (BBC)
• Australian Van Tuong Nguyen is executed by hanging in Singapore for drug trafficking. (AP via Yahoo)
• An independent commission to investigate the Malaysian prisoner abuse scandal is established by Prime Minister of Malaysia Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. (The Sun Malaysia)
• The "Thermopolis" specimen, recently donated to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis, Wyoming and described in the Science article "A well-preserved Archaeopteryx specimen with theropod features", shows that the Archaeopteryx lacked a reversed toe—a universal feature of birds—limiting its ability to perch in trees and implying a terrestrial lifestyle. This has been interpreted as evidence of theropod ancestry. The specimen also has a hyperextendible second toe. "Until now, the feature was thought to belong only to the species' close relatives, the deinonychosaurs."
• The European release of the Xbox 360.