Portal:Current events/2006 October 25

October 25, 2006 (Wednesday)

2006 North Korean nuclear testing: North Korea warns that any participation by South Korea in U.S. led sanctions would be seen as a serious provocation leading to a "crisis of war" on the Korean peninsula. (CNN)
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki objects to U.S. efforts to get his government to set a timetable for achieving security goals and denounces a raid by U.S. and Iraqi forces on the militias in Sadr City that was done without his knowledge. (AP via ABC)
The CITIC Group of Beijing buys the Nations Energy Company, the state-owned petroleum company of Kazakhstan, for USD $1.91 billion. (Canadian Business Online)
Surgeons in the United Kingdom are given permission by a National Health Service ethics committee to prepare to perform the world's first full face transplant at London's Royal Free Hospital. (BBC)
Argentine prosecutors formally charge the Iranian government and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah over the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre which killed 85 people. (BBC)
The United States Federal Reserve keeps its benchmark interest rate at 5.25 percent for a third month and reiterates that officials are relying on lower energy prices and slowing growth to reduce inflation. (Bloomberg)
Conflict in the Niger Delta: Villagers in Nigeria storm and seize three Royal Dutch Shell oil platforms in the Niger Delta, forcing oil production to be shut down at each one. (AP via Daily Comet)
The Islamic Courts Union in Somalia has begun recruiting thousands of people in response to alleged military action by neighboring Ethiopia, amid fears of all-out war across the country. (Al Jazeera)
The government of Niger announces that due to "difficult relations with indigenous rural populations," the country's 150,000 Mahamid Arab refugee population who have lived in Niger since having fled Chad two decades earlier, will be deported back to Chad. (Reuters)
General George W. Casey Jr., the top United States commander in Iraq, has said it will take 12 to 18 months before Iraqi security forces are ready to take over in the country. (CNN)
South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok resigns. Defence Minister Yoon Kwang-ung had resigned earlier in the week with the President of South Korea Roh Moo-Hyun expected to announce changes in his foreign policy and defence advisers soon. (AFP via Channel News Asia)
Brigadier Mick Slater, the commander of Australian troops in East Timor warns that a humanitarian disaster could happen in that nation, unless housing for refugees fleeing the unrest in Dili can be arranged before the approaching wet season. (ABC News Australia)
Carl Scully resigns as Police Minister of New South Wales for misleading the New South Wales Legislative Assembly twice in two weeks over a report on the 2005 Cronulla riots. (Daily Telegraph)
Jon Lech Johansen claims to have reverse engineered the FairPlay copy protection used by Apple's iPod and iTunes Store. (BBC) (AP via CNN)