October 23, 2004

Political Crisis in French Polynesia continues with the fall of the government of Oscar Temaru and doubts cast on the legitimacy of the re-election of Gaston Flosse as President of French Polynesia. (Pacific Islands Report)
Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, Somalia's new president, requests 20,000 African Union troops to help secure the country. (BBC)
The United States Navy commissions the USS Virginia, the lead ship of the Virginia class. (AP) (AFP) (Virginian-Pilot)
Prosecutors in France file charges against former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet for the disappearance and torture of four French citizens in the 1970s. (BBC)
Conflict in Iraq: A suicide car bomb kills 16 and wounds 40 at a police training base in Ramadi west of Baghdad. A separate car bomb kills four Iraqi National Guard soldiers at a check point in Samarra. Two die and four are injured in U.S. air strikes on Falluja. In Mosul, two Turkish drivers are killed and two wounded when their convoy is attacked. Mortars land in central Baghdad killing two civilians. The U.S. military say they have captured a senior official of al-Zarqawi's militant organization. (Reuters) (BBC)
A powerful earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale strikes the Chuetsu region of Niigata Prefecture in Japan, killing at least 13 people. (BBC) (USGS)