October 2005 - October 4, 2005 (Tuesday)

October 4, 2005 (Tuesday)

• United States President George W. Bush expresses concern for a potential avian flu outbreak. He requests Congressional legislation permitting the military to impose a quarantine in the event of a deadly flu pandemic. (IndyStar)
• Eleven embassies in the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, receive suspicious packages containing threatening letters and an unidentified liquid, triggering security alerts. (Forbes)
• Conflict in Iraq: Five U.S. soldiers die during sweeps of insurgent-held towns in Iraq. (Seattle Times).
• The Malawi government says that 650,000 people in the country have died due to AIDS in the past two decades. There are now 850,000 orphaned children, 50% resulting from AIDS. (allAfrica)
• The United Nations Security Council demands that Rwandan rebels, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), immediately disarm and leave Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Reuters)
• Two Congolese soldiers die and eleven others are injured in a plane crash as the United Nations and Democratic Republic of the Congo's army airlifted local troops to the northeastern frontier to confront Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army rebels. (Reuters)
• One million French transportation workers and teachers hold a nationwide strike in opposition to the Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's economic and labor policies, forcing the closure of schools and airports. (Reuters)
• Ohio Iraqi War veteran Paul Hackett is expected to run in the state Democratic primary to contest the seat of Republican Senator Mike DeWine. Hackett lost in a closely contested House race on August 2.(The Cincinnati Enquirer)
• Roy J. Glauber, John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch share in the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics. (Nobelprize.org)
• Four Ugandan civilians are killed in a rare afternoon ambush on a pickup truck in northeast Uganda by Lord's Resistance Army rebels. The insurgents are suspected of shooting the driver and two passengers and killing a fourth with an axe. (BBC News)
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A 37-year-old Palestinian mother of six is shot and killed after she stabbed and lightly injured a female Israel Defense Forces soldier at the Hawara roadblock south of Nablus. No militant group claimed the attack, but it is known that the woman's brother was killed by the IDF at the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. (Ynetnews), (BBC)