Portal:Current events

• A chartered Atlantic Airways Flight 670 skids off the runway at Stord Airport in Norway, killing three people. (BBC News)
• Iraq insurgency
  • Iraqi police announce they have found a total of 60 corpses at locations across Baghdad in the previous 24 hours, thought to be more victims of insurgent death squads. In addition, a bomb planted under a car explodes in the city's southern district of Doura, killing 10 people. (Reuters)
  • United States military sources state that a total of 30 militants and 4 US soldiers have been killed since the weekend. (BBC) (Reuters)
• Twelve people die in a bomb attack on a festival in the town of Makilala in the Philippines. (BBC)
• A naval base and oil facility in Bayelsa State, Nigeria, are captured by armed attackers who are now thought to be holding 60 people hostage. (CNN)
• Million Voices against Corruption, President Chen Must Go: Hundreds of thousands of people made a protest against President Chen Shui-bian in Taipei, Taiwan, surrounding Office of the President, where Chen took part in ceremony marking Double Tenth Day. (BBC)

• Somali Islamists declare 'jihad' against Ethiopia. (Reuters) (BBC News)
• French lawmakers introduce a bill to criminalise denial of the Armenian Genocide. The legislation would imprison offenders for one year and fine them up to €45,000. Turkey appeals to the European Union to try to prevent the move. (TurkishPress) (The Guardian) (IHT)
• Google officially announces that they will buy video sharing website YouTube for US$1.65 billion. (BBC)
• South Korean Ban Ki-moon is nominated to succeed Kofi Annan as the United Nations Secretary-General in an affirmation vote by the Security Council. A confirmation vote by the General Assembly is expected within the next fortnight. (Reuters via CNN)
• 2006 North Korean nuclear test
  • The Korean Central News Agency of North Korea reports that the nation has tested its first nuclear weapon in an underground facility at Gilju in North Hamgyong province. This report was at least somewhat confirmed by a seismic event that was measured around the world. (AP) (Adelaide Now)
  • The United States Geological Survey says it detected an earthquake of 4.2 in North Korea suspected to be caused by the effects of the underground blast. (AFP via ABS_CBN)
  • China expresses its "resolute opposition" to what it described as North Korea's "brazen" nuclear test. (The Australian)
  • US President George W. Bush, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun are among world leaders to condemn North Korea's nuclear testing, calling it "provocative", "irresponsible" and "a serious threat to peace", respectively. (BBC)
• American Edmund S. Phelps wins the 2006 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work on the trade-offs between inflation and unemployment. (AP)

• The results of the Belgian municipal elections show losses for the liberals and progress for the conservatives and nationalists. (CNN)
• Iraq's Environmental Secretary claims that 11 police officers have died of food poisoning in the Wasit province of that country. The governor of the Wasit province claims that no officers have died, but that several are in critical condition. It is unclear whether or not the poisonings were intentional. (Associated Press)

• New Guinea volcano Rabaul caldera erupts. Two hundred people are evacuated but favourable winds help protect the town from the impact.

(ABC News Australia)

• Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, famous for her criticism of President Vladimir Putin and government's actions in Chechnya, is found murdered in Moscow on Putin's birthday. (Interfax), (BBC)
• Sixty warning shots are fired by South Korean soldiers at the Korean Demilitarized Zone after they observe five North Korean soldiers crossing part of the boundary. (AP via CNN)
• Latvian parliamentary election, 2006: The governing coalition led by Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis wins re-election in Latvia, the first administration to be re-elected since Latvia became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991. (BBC)

• A truce is called in Bolivia after a dynamite battle between rival groups of tin miners kills 16 people in the department of Oruro, with another 60 people injured. President Evo Morales sacks his mining minister for not anticipating the violence. (ABC News Australia)
• Some 18,000 people are evacuated from the Apex area of the U.S. state of North Carolina and 13 are reported injured after a blast and fire at an Environmental Quality Industrial Services chemical plant. (CNN)
• Negotiators from the European Union and the United States reach a deal on sharing trans-Atlantic passenger data used in anti-terrorism investigations. (The Independent)
• The Roman Catholic Church's Theological Commission are reviewing the teaching of limbus infantium (limbo for infants who died before being baptised) and may recommend to Pope Benedict XVI that it be amended. (BBC)
• The new Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, presents his new cabinet. (BBC)
• 2006 Southeast Asian haze: Smoke from fires in western Indonesia causes air quality and visibility to plummet to unhealthy levels in neighboring Malaysia. (AP via CNN)
• NASA releases close-up photos taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of the planet Mars revealing its hidden, oceanic past. (TimesUK)

• The Dow Jones industrial average closes at a record high for the third day in a row. (ABC News Australia Online)
• German authorities uncover 51 skeletons from a mass grave at the village of Menden-Barge in the Sauerland region of the country, thought to be remains of victims of Nazi atrocities during World War II. (BBC)
• Mark Foley scandal
  • The House Ethics Committee issued four dozen subpoenas to members of Congress and aides to discover who was aware of explicit exchanges between former representative Mark Foley and underage Congressional pages. (MSNBC)
• Reports indicate that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq who succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi after his death, may have been killed in Haditha. A body initially tentatively identified as his is undergoing DNA analysis but most government sources are skeptical. (BBC)
• The European Central Bank raises its interest rate from 3% to 3.25% representing the fifth rise in eleven months. The Bank of England decides to leave interest rates in the United Kingdom unchanged. (Marketwatch)
• Edmund Daukoru, a Nigerian oil minister and president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) flags that the organization will hold an emergency meeting to cut output. The Financial Times reports that OPEC has informally agreed to cut output 4% to defend the oil price. (USA Today)
• Post-Soviet Georgia holds the municipal elections seen as a crucial test for the country’s current government amid the ongoing tensions with Russia. (International Herald Tribune)
• NTV television in Turkey reports that 260 Turkish soldiers will join the peacekeeping force in Lebanon. (The Boston Globe)
• NATO expands its security mission to the whole of Afghanistan, taking command of more than 13,000 U.S. troops in the east of the country. (CNN)

• Thai authorities take steps to hold peace talks with two Muslim insurgencies, the Patani United Liberation Organisation (PULO) and Bersatu, who are fighting the Government in the Muslim-majority southern provinces of Thailand. (News Limited)

• The Dow Jones industrial average reaches another record high close, rising above 11,850 for the first time. (CBS News)
• A United States Appeals Court in Cincinnati, Ohio rules that the U.S. government can continue to use its warrantless domestic wiretap program pending the Justice Department's appeal of a federal judge's ruling outlawing the program. (Reuters)
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Food and Drug Administration searches two spinach packaging companies in the Salinas Valley in California for evidence related to a recent outbreak of E. coli in the United States and Canada that made 200 people sick. (San Francisco Chronicle)
• The European Union imposes an anti-dumping tariff on leather shoe imports from the Far East - 16.5% on imports from China and 10% on imports from Vietnam. China supplies about 1.25 billion pairs of shoes to the EU each year. (EUobserver.com)
• American Roger Kornberg wins the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for describing the essential process of gene copying in cells, research that can give insight into illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. (Boston Globe)
• Mark Foley scandal:
  • The Drudge Report alleges that one teen with whom Mark Foley engaged in cybersex during a House vote was 18 years old at the time of the communications. (Drudge Report)
  • A former page states that he was warned of Representative Foley's advances by a departing page in 1995. Among his claims are that Foley made him uncomfortable and offered to buy him ice cream on several occasions. (Chicago Tribune)
  • House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert states that he will not resign from his position in the wake of the scandal. (Chicago Sun-Times)