October 23, 2004 (Saturday)
- Political Crisis in French Polynesia continues with the fall of the government of Oscar Temaru and doubts cast on the legitimacy of the re-election of Gaston Flosse as President of French Polynesia. (Pacific Islands Report)
- Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, Somalia's new president, requests 20,000 African Union troops to help secure the country. (BBC)
- The United States Navy commissions the USS Virginia, the lead ship of the Virginia class. (AP) (AFP) (Virginian-Pilot)
- Prosecutors in France file charges against former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet for the disappearance and torture of four French citizens in the 1970s. (BBC)
- Conflict in Iraq: A suicide car bomb kills 16 and wounds 40 at a police training base in Ramadi west of Baghdad. A separate car bomb kills four Iraqi National Guard soldiers at a check point in Samarra. Two die and four are injured in U.S. air strikes on Falluja. In Mosul, two Turkish drivers are killed and two wounded when their convoy is attacked. Mortars land in central Baghdad killing two civilians. The U.S. military say they have captured a senior official of al-Zarqawi's militant organization. (Reuters) (BBC)
- A powerful 2004 Chūetsu earthquake 6.7 measuring and six aftershocks of similar scale occur in the Tokamachi area. A huge landslide occurs on the outskirts of Nagaoka. Both area is southern and central Niigata Prefecture in Japan. According to Japanese officials, 68 people are killed, 4,085 are injured, and 103,000 are rendered homeless.