Portal:Current events/2005 September 23

September 23, 2005 (Friday)

Filiberto Ojeda Rios, Puerto Rican nationalist movement leader, is killed following a shootout with the FBI. (BBC)
Lester Crawford, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner resigns; citing old age. Critics accuse Crawford of incompetence regarding Vioxx, cloned beef, approval of malfunctioning heart devices, and alleged corruption. He served two months in office. (AP on Yahoo!)
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
- At least 10 Palestinians die and 80 are injured when a truck carrying home-made explosives explodes during a Friday salat parade organised by Hamas. Hamas blames Israel, claiming an Israeli plane blew up the vehicle, while Israel and the Palestinian Authority blames Hamas. (Jerusalem Post), (ABC News)
- 3 Palestinian gunmen are killed following an Israeli military incursion into the West Bank. (BBC)
- At least 3 Qassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip hit the Israeli town of Sderot. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad claims responsibility, saying it fired 10 rockets at Israel. (The Jerusalem Post) (Ha'aretz)^{[permanent dead link]}
- A United Nations report says that since 2000 61 Palestinian women have given birth while delayed at Israeli checkpoints, resulting in 36 newborn deaths.(BBC), (Reuters), (Sydney Morning Herald)
Conflict in Iraq: Five Iraqis, including three members of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, die following a bomb on minibus in the capital Baghdad. (BBC)
Hurricane Rita: 24 mostly elderly people are feared dead after a bus evacuating them from the path of the hurricane caught fire. (BBC)
Earl Krugel, a leader of the Jewish Defence League, is sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to a plot to blow up a mosque in Los Angeles and Lebanese-American congressman Darrell Issa's office. His co-accused, Irv Rubin, committed suicide in 2002. (BBC) (Jerusalem Post)
German election 2005: After talks between CDU/CSU and Alliance 90/The Greens, a "Jamaica coalition" between conservatives, liberals and greens is ruled out.
In the Netherlands, Victor de Bruijn signs a living-together contract with Bianca de Bruijn (to whom he is already married) and Mirjam Geven, rekindling the polyamory / legalized polygamy debate throughout the Western world.