Portal:Current events/2006 June 23
June 23, 2006 (Friday)
- Human Rights Watch estimates that several hundred civilians in eastern Chad have been massacred by Sudanese Janjaweed and UFDC attacks in the past week alone. HRW also accuses the Government of Sudan of using child soldiers. HRW Africa Director Peter Takirambudde refers to the attacks as "havoc," and that civilians "are trapped between the carnage in Darfur and Chad's downward spiral into chaos." (CNN)
- Director of the United States Missile Defense Agency, Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, stated that he is "very confident" any North Korean missile headed towards the United States would be destroyed mid-flight by interceptor missiles if approved by the President. (Associated Press)
- U.S. President George W. Bush has issued an executive order stating that he will limit taking of private property by the federal government and that it must "benefit... the general public...and not merely for the purpose of economic interest of private properties..." (White House Press Release)
- Saddam Hussein has ended a brief hunger strike, after missing one meal in his prison. He did this in protest of the killing of one of his lawyers. (Reuters)
- A United States warship is reported to have shot down a missile in the Pacific, in a test of their now operational sea-based missile defense system. (AFP)
- Harriet, a Galapagos tortoise, has died at age 176. Harriet was one of the oldest known animals in the world. (Sydney Morning Herald)
- Norman Mineta announces his resignation as United States Secretary of Transportation effective from July 7, 2006. (Associated Press)
- The New York Times publishes a major story on the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, a secret CIA surveillance of international private banking for the last five years via the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) and rejects government requests to withdraw it. (NYT)
- Prime Minister of Poland Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz announced a dismissal of Zyta Gilowska, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. PM's advisor Paweł Wojciechowski was introduced as her successor. Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz declared that Gilowska's policy will be continued. (CNN)
- Actor, singer, dancer, and television producer Aaron Spelling dies at age 83 due to complications from the stroke that had occurred five days before on 18 June 2006. There was a private funeral several days later.