January 29, 2002. Copyright, 2002, Graphic News. All rights reserved

WORLD AGENDA: World in February 2002
Compiled by Elisabeth Ribbans

February 2: Presidential elections take place in Costa Rica.

February 2: Dutch royalists will celebrate the wedding in Amsterdam of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander -- eldest son of Queen Beatrix -- and his Argentinian fiancee Maxima Zorreguieta, a banker.

February 4: Kenneth Lay, former chairman of collapsed energy company Enron, is due to testify in front of a U.S. Senate committee to explain his role in the biggest bankruptcy in the nationÕs history.

February 4: A painting by Claude Monet, not been seen in public since 1889, is expected to fetch up to $4.35m when it goes under the hammer at ChristieÕs in London. The oil on canvas, Prairie de Limetz, depicts poplar trees near the artistÕs home in Giverny.

February 8: More than 2,300 stars of snow and ice gather in Salt Lake City, Utah, for the opening of the biggest-ever Winter Olympics. In the wake of the September terror attacks, authorities are spending $300m on security for the two-week event.

February 8: Financial meltdown in Argentina will be among the top items on the agenda when G7 finance ministers and central bank governors meet in Ottawa for their summit on the global economy.

February 11: Senators Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman are to open an investigation into the health problems caused by air pollution at the site of the World Trade Center atrocity. It follows reports of respiratory problems among many Manhattan residents and ÒGround ZeroÓ workers.

February 12: Slobodan Milosevic, the 60-year-old former president of Yugoslavia, is scheduled to stand trial at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He is accused of genocide in Bosnia and Croatia, and of responsibility for the murder of 900 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.


February 20/27: A month of more-than-usual rivalry for music icons as Britain hands out the prestigious Brit awards (Feb 20), with Kylie, Dido, Robbie Williams and Gorillaz topping the nominations list. A week later, Los Angeles hosts the 44th Grammy gala (Feb27), honouring everything from pop to polka. Veteran rockers U2 are short-listed for eight prizes.

February 21: Presidents George W. Bush and Jiang Zemin meet for summit talks in Beijing, with both sides looking determined to forge friendly relations, despite recent allegations that the Chinese premierÕs US-built jet was fitted with listening devices.

February: World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik is scheduled to take on supercomputer Deep Fritz in Bahrain. The 26-year-old Russian will net $1m if he wins. Deep Fritz, which can visualize four million moves a second, is an upgraded version of the Deep Blue computer that beat Garry Kasparov in 1997.
/ENDS