Portal:Current events/2005 September 30

30 September 2005 (Friday)

• United Nations World Food Programme warns that a sharp increase in malnutrition rates and rapidly rising maize prices in Malawi could push the number of vulnerable people in need of food aid up to five million. (Reuters)
• U.S. Senator Harry Reid, and other Democrats, criticize talk show host William Bennett for saying: "You could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." (WLTX)
• The new United Nations coordinator for human and avian influenza warns that 5-150 million people could die in a flu epidemic. Humans have no natural immunity to the virus. (M&C News) (BBC)
• Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, publishes 12 editorial cartoons which depict Muhammad
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
  • An unarmed Palestinian boy, 13 years old, is shot dead by Israel Defense Forces troops. Israel declares its intention to hold an inquiry into the event. (BBC)
  • Two members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade are shot dead in an Israeli raid into the Balata refugee camp, in Nablus, on the West Bank. (BBC)
• Conflict in Iraq: 10 people die following a car bomb in Hillah, Iraq. (BBC)
• An Osaka High Court judge rules that the visit by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine violates the constitution's separation of church and state. The visit by a Japanese head of government to the war shrine is a sensitive issue with China and South Korea. (Reuters)
• United States negotiators in Geneva are caught off guard by European demands for a change from U.S. Commerce Department control to international regulation of the Internet. (International Herald Tribune) (openDemocracy)
• New York Times journalist Judith Miller testifies before a federal grand jury and identifies Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, as her confidential source for a non-published story about the unmasking of a CIA agent in 2003. (CNN)