October 29, 2004

• NAACP sends out warnings about a forged letter that threatens the arrest of voters who have outstanding parking tickets or have failed to pay child support. (The State)
• Vaughn Meader, whose The First Family comedy-album spoof of John F. Kennedy was the fastest-selling American album of all time and won the 1963 Grammy Award for best album of the year, dies in Auburn, Maine. (CNN)
• Fighting broke out for the second time in a month in Somalia between the declared independent Republic of Somaliland and the autonomous Puntland. So far, fighting in the disputed region has left over a hundred dead.(BBC)
• In Rome, heads of state and government from the countries of the European Union sign the treaty establishing a constitution for Europe. The treaty is still subject to ratification by the member nations. (BBC)
• Norodom Sihamoni is crowned King of Cambodia. (BBC)
• Yasser Arafat is flown to Paris, France for medical treatment at Percy military hospital which specializes in blood disorders and cancer. Ahmed Qurei will manage the daily affairs of the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestine Liberation Organization. (Reuters)
• Two bombings occur in southern Thailand, in the wake of clashes between minority Muslim protesters and Thai soldiers in which about 80 protesters were suffocated while being transported to detention camps. (see 26 October current events.) (INQ7.net)
• A Johns Hopkins University study, published in the British medical journal the Lancet, estimates that an additional 100,000 civilian deaths have occurred since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. However, the study has a significant margin of error — the actual figure predicted by the study is anywhere from 8,000 to 194,000 excess deaths. (The Lancet) (Lancet report [pdf]) (BBC) (Slate)
• The New York Times reports the existence of a videotape made by a KSTP St. Paul, Minnesota television crew embedded with U.S. 101st Airborne Division troops on April 18, 2003, nine days after Hussein's fall. The videotape shows the sealed explosives containers at Al Qaqaa, clearly displaying the ammunition cache of explosives and other weapons supplies, sealed with the IAEA seals which were reported by the IAEA 18 months ago. (NY Times)
• Arab television network Al Jazeera broadcasts a new video tape of Osama bin Laden, addressing citizens of the United States, acknowledging his responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks, threatening further action against the U.S., and criticizing U.S. President George W. Bush. He said that the security of the American people depended neither on Mr. Bush nor on John Kerry, but on US policy. (Reuters) (BBC)
• Belgium : Strike of the buses, metros and tramways of the Brussels public transport company STIB/MIVB. Buses of De lijn however worked. (Expatica.com) (Xinhua)