September 28, 2004

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[edit] September 28, 2004

• The 2004 Summer Paralympics in Athens, Greece closes. China, Great Britain and Canada have won the most gold medals. (Athens2004.com)
• North Korea nuclear weapons program: North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su-hon announces at the UN General Assembly that it has turned plutonium from 8,000 spent fuel rods into nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the U.S. nuclear threat. Six-nation talks on the nuclear issue, which were due to have resumed before October, have been suspended. Analysts believe North Korea has ruled out further talks until after the U.S. presidential election in November. (BBC)
• Republic of China foreign minister Mark Chen calls Singapore "the size of a piece of snot" after Singaporean foreign minister George Yeo declared opposition to Taiwan independence. He later apologized for his "improper wording". (BBC) (China Post)
• U.S. President George W. Bush's hometown newspaper, the Crawford, Texas Lone Star Iconoclast, endorses Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. The editorial column asked Texan voters "not to rate the candidate by his hometown . . . but instead by where he intends to take the country." In the last election, the paper endorsed Bush. (Reuters) (Lone Star Iconoclast)
• Giovanni di Stefano, the lawyer of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, tells the Danish newspaper B.T. that Hussein plans to run as a candidate in the Iraqi elections scheduled for January 2005. A recent Gallup poll indicated that 42 percent of the Iraqi people want their former leader back. (Zaman, Turkey)
• Health officials in Thailand report that they have identified a likely case of human to human transmission of the H5N1 strain of avian flu, although the World Health Organization says the transmission occurred only after prolonged contact between individuals. A more easily transmitted virus could potentially cause a worldwide flu pandemic on the level of the 1918 Spanish flu. (Reuters)
• Conflict in Iraq:
  • In Baghdad, two Italian aid workers, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta are released, three weeks after they were taken hostage, along with two Iraqis who had been captured with them. In a separate incident, four Egyptian workers are also released. (The Scotsman).
  • Two British soldiers are killed in an ambush near the southern Iraqi city of Basra. (BBC)
  • The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush says that it had considered secretly supporting pro-U.S. candidates in the upcoming elections in Iraq, but has now decided against the plan. (TIME) (Houston Chronicle)
  • U.S. military planes bomb a building in the insurgent-held city of Fallujah, in what the U.S. describes as a raid against terrorists linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Local doctors say at least three civilians were killed, but the U.S. says only "Zarqawi operatives" died. (BBC)
• Arab-Israeli conflict:
  • In the Gaza Strip, CNN producer Riad Abu Ali, an Israeli citizen, is released by his captors one day after he was abducted from his car by Palestinian militants. (Reuters)
  • Israeli soldiers kill a mentally ill Palestinian man in the West Bank city of Jenin, under disputed circumstances. (BBC)
• The price of U.S. light crude briefly exceeds the price of USD 50/barrel, the highest since 1983. Analysts attribute the increase largely to concerns over the disruption of oil production in Nigeria; conflicts in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and the effects of Hurricane Ivan are also cited. (BBC)
• A Nigerian militant group threatens "all-out war" against foreign companies in the Niger River delta region if they do not leave by October. The European oil company Royal Dutch/Shell has already evacuated 254 non-essential workers from the area. (BBC: 1, 2)
• A strong earthquake, with an estimated magnitude of 6.0 on the Richter scale, strikes central California, near Parkfield. The effects are felt as far away as Sacramento and Santa Ana. (CNN)