October 17, 2002 (Thursday)
- Zamboanga bombings: Two bombs exploded in the main shopping district of the mostly Christian city of Zamboanga in the southern Philippines, killing six and wounding about 150. It was the second major evident terrorist incident in southeast Asia in less than a week. Suspicion immediately focused on Jemaah Islamiyah, an Islamic extremist group also being investigated for the October 11 Bali car bombing, in which more than 180 people died.
- U.S. officials announce the existence of a clandestine North Korea nuclear weapons program, admitted to by North Korean officials.
- There is further evidence for the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy. The object Sagittarius A* has now been identified as the black hole at the galactic centre by a team led by Rainer Schödel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, who observed the behavior of the star S2 which is near Sagittarius A*.