Portal:Current events/2004 June 8
June 8, 2004 (Tuesday)
- Venezuela's National Electoral Council announces that Hugo Chávez's presidency will be subject to a recall referendum on 15 August, with general elections to follow within 30 days if the vote goes against the president. (BBC)
- Al-Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia threaten new attacks on Western passenger airliners. (Reuters)
- A March 2003 memorandum by US administration lawyers is released, which concludes that President George W. Bush was not bound by international treaty or by federal law against torture because the commander-in-chief had the authority to protect national security. (BBC)
- Venus passes between the Sun and the Earth in the first transit of Venus since 1882. (BBC)
- Hey Arnold! ended.
- U.S.-led occupation of Iraq:
- U.S.-led special forces free three Italians and a Pole held hostage in Iraq. They are among the civilians kidnapped on April 12 near Baghdad. At that time, a fifth hostage was murdered after Italy refused the kidnappers' demands to withdraw its troops from Iraq. (Reuters)
- A suspected car bomb kills 4 Iraqis and wounds 11 outside a United States military base in the northern town of Baquba. (Reuters) Archived 2004-06-17 at archive.today
- A suspected suicide car bomb kills 9 and wounds at least 25 others in Mosul. (Reuters)
- UK Health Minister John Reid warns against anti-tobacco vigilantism, defending cigarettes as one of the "very few pleasures in life" available to the poor. (BBC) (Daily Telegraph)[permanent dead link]
- Chinese Internet authorities shut down the website of the Open Constitutional Initiative (OCI), a leading website campaigning for greater constitutional protections in China. OCI is a group of intellectuals that have been posting essays on the website related to constitutional issues and the protections of citizens rights as laid out in the Constitution of the People's Republic of China.
- The heart of the dauphin Louis-Charles, recognized by French royalists as Louis XVII of France, is entombed in the royal crypt of Saint-Denis Basilica outside Paris, 211 years after he perished in the French Revolution. DNA testing had verified the heart as belonging to the son of the guillotined King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. No French government officials or members of reigning royal families attend the service. (CBC)