Portal:Current events/2004 December 18

December 18, 2004 (Saturday)

Hundreds of Sikh demonstrators protest outside a Birmingham, England, theatre against a play (Behzti) depicting sex abuse and murder in a Sikh temple. Theatre stormed by a few demonstrators. (BBC)
2004 U.S. presidential election controversy:
- Voting machine manufacturer Diebold Election Systems will pay a $2.6 million settlement to the State of California over the lawsuit filed by the state in September alleging that Diebold was not truthful about the security and reliability of its electronic voting machines. (internetnews.com)
- In a sharp change from their traditional role, several members of the Electoral College have filed a protest of the official election results, one even casting his electoral vote provisionally upon a revote. These electors have called for a member of the U.S. Senate to protest the election results on January 6. (AP)^{[permanent dead link‍]} (Sacramento Bee) (Burlington Union)
In Topeka, Kansas, US, infant Victoria Jo Stinnett is returned to her father three days after her mother was allegedly strangled to death and she was cut from her mother's uterus and abducted. The AMBER Alert system is credited with helping to safely recover the child. (CNN)
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
- Palestinians fire several Qassam rockets at the civilian town Sderot and the northern Negev, causing damage but no casualties. (Haaretz)
- Another three Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers on Saturday during an Israeli incursion into the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, raising the death toll to 11. According to Palestinian sources, three of those killed were civilians, the rest were militants from Hamas and Fatah's Abu Reish Brigades. The IDF has officially ended Khan Yunis raid, dubbed "Operation Orange Iron", and threatened to return if mortar shelling will be renewed by militants. (BBC), (Haaretz)
- Palestinians have been unable to bury the dead because Israeli forces were in control at the local cemetery, medics told the Reuters news agency. (BBC)
- Six Palestinians were rescued from a collapsed tunnel under an Israel-controlled corridor in the Egypt–Gaza border area. (BBC)
Former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet has been taken to hospital after suffering a stroke. (BBC)
Darfur conflict: The African Union has given both sides involved in the Darfur conflict a deadline of 1700 GMT to halt the fighting in the region which currently violates the ceasefire agreement. If this condition is not met, talks in Nigeria to find a solution to the conflict would end. (BBC)
Conflict in Iraq:
- Former senior Iraqi official Ali Hassan al-Majid (aka "Chemical Ali") is questioned by Iraqi judges in a pre-trial hearing. He is accused of crimes committed by the regime, such as the gassing of Iraqi Kurds in 1988. (BBC) (Reuters)^{[permanent dead link‍]}
- Iraqi insurgents attack election offices in northern Iraq, killing two people and wounding nine, six weeks before the country is due to go to the polls. (Reuters)^{[permanent dead link‍]}