Portal:Current events/2010 April 12

Current events of April 12, 2010 (2010-04-12) (Monday)

• Sudan's landmark elections are extended by two days after delays delivering ballot papers. (BBC) (Al Jazeera)
• Hungarian parliamentary election, 2010
  • The centre-right Hungarian Civic Union (Fidesz) wins all 119 individual seats in the first round of Hungary's parliamentary elections. Their total of 206 seats gives them an outright majority in the National Assembly, with 121 seats still in play in the second round on April 25.
  • The left-wing Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) earns 28 regional seats, while the far-right Movement for a Better Hungary (JOBBIK) earns 26 regional seats. The remaining five seats went to the green party Politics Can Be Different (LMP). (BBC)
• 2010 Holywood car bombing:
  • A car bomb explodes shortly after midnight near Northern Ireland's MI5 headquarters in Holywood, County Down, blowing an elderly man off his feet and sending him to hospital. (Times Online) (Xinhua)
  • The Real IRA issues a telephone call to the BBC to claim responsibility. (BBC) (RTÉ)
• Northern Ireland appoints its first justice minister in 38 years. (BBC)
• Aftermath of 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash:
  • Polish President Lech Kaczyński lies in state in Warsaw as Russia marks a day of mourning and Poland appoints an acting head of the central bank to replace the one killed in Saturday's air disaster near Smolensk. (BBC) (RTÉ)
  • His funeral and burial and that of his wife who died with him are to take place on Saturday. (CNN)
  • The search for body parts continues at the crash site, with only 14 corpses easily identified by relatives and 20 others by forensic experts, with DNA testing necessary to identify the rest of the corpses. (RIA Novosti)
  • Poland's acting President is to review travel rules for military officials after the late President and all his army generals die in one plane crash. (BBC)
  • Western experts mull the causes of the plane crash. (RIA Novosti)
• Nine people are thought to have been killed and 30 others are injured, some seriously, after a landslide caused a train to derail in Merano, near the Austrian border with Italy. (BBC) (Al Jazeera)
• The United States opens fire on a bus in Afghanistan, knocking the driver unconscious, killing as many as five civilians, including a woman, and wounding at least 18 other passengers.(The New York Times) (Al Jazeera)
• Nuclear Security Summit
  • U.S. President Barack Obama opens the summit of 47 countries, the purpose of which is to discuss nuclear security, in particular how to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of potential terrorists. (CCTV)
  • Ukraine announces it will dispose of its enriched uranium supply. (CNN)
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancels his plans to attend the summit. (Vancouver Sun)
  • A proposed nuclear fuel bank is discussed at the summit. [1][2]
• The UK General Election countdown:
  • The Labour party launches its manifesto, which states that it will halve the budget deficit within four years through a mixture of spending restraint and tax increases, mainly for the higher paid, that failing police forces will be taken over by successful ones, that every primary-school child who needs it will get one-to-one tuition and that there will be no switch to the euro without a referendum.
  • SNP leader Alex Salmond urges the Scots to vote for an "alternative vision of the future" as he launched the party's election campaign. The Scottish first minister attacks Labour and the Tories for cuts which he said posed a danger to public services.
  • Welsh Assembly Government ministers are accused of "abuse of position" by announcing £17.5 miles in tourism grants during the general election campaign. Welsh Conservative leader Nick Bourne says Heritage Minister Alun Ffred Jones and Environment Minster Jane Davidson must "face questions".
• The Washington Post wins four awards at the 2010 Pulitzer Prizes. (The New York Times)
• Pope Benedict XVI and the child sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church:
  • Homosexuality is to blame for paedophilia, according to Vatican Secretary of State and the Pope's Deputy, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, speaking today at a news conference in Chile. (The Washington Post) (Reuters)
  • The Vatican has handled damaging child abuse cases in an “exemplary” manner, according to the editor-in-chief of Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano Giovanni Maria Vian, who also hails Benedict as a “great communicator”. (National Post)
  • Children were allegedly "sadistically tormented and also sexually abused" at a Catholic monastery in Ettal, Bavaria. (Reuters)
  • Benedict's security is increased for his visit to Malta after the island's population of sexually abused announce plans to protest at his handling of the scandal. (The Daily Telegraph)
  • British campaigners threaten to arrest Benedict for crimes against humanity when he visits the UK. (Deutsche Welle) (The Sydney Morning Herald) (The Guardian) (New York Daily News) (Ynetnews)
  • The Vatican publishes its guidelines for dealing with cases of sexual abuse of children in an effort to quell critics. (Reuters via The New York Times)
  • The Vatican says it is overhauling its rules on handling sexual abuse accusations. (CNN)
  • Ten Maltese men, who have taken three priests to court on charges of child abuse, request a private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI when he visits Malta this weekend. (Reuters India) (Boston Herald)
• An Iranian and a Tajik are jailed for 25 years in Dubai over the 2009 killing of a Chechen militant commander. (BBC) (The Washington Post) (Miami Herald) (Reuters) (People's Daily Online) (The Star)
• Leading Russian federal judge Eduard Chuvashov is shot dead at his apartment building in central Moscow. (BBC) (Al Jazeera)
• Three former Labour Party MPs – David Chaytor, Elliot Morley and Jim Devine – face criminal charges over their expenses win the right to have their legal fees paid for by the taxpayer. (BBC)
• The World Trade Organization overturns Australia's ban on importing New Zealand apples, which had been in place since 1919. (The Age)
• The world's deepest undersea volcanic vents are discovered in the Cayman Trough in the Caribbean. (BBC)
• The Copenhagen Conference was destroyed from the start by the leak of the "Danish draft" negotiating text to The Guardian, the Indian environment minister said this weekend in a warning that the breakdown of international trust would continue to undermine climate talks this year. (The Guardian)
• A 6.2 magnitude earthquake strikes Spain, one of the first large earthquakes to strike the Iberian region in half a century.
• Microsoft launches two new mobile phones marketed to young people. The phones, the Kin One and Kin Two, are built around their social networking features. (New York Times)
• SS Columbia, feared lost at sea after the 8.8-magnitude Chile earthquake, arrives in a Chilean port, more than a month after it was scheduled to dock. (Times Online)
• Manchester City and Togo striker Emmanuel Adebayor announces his retirement from international football at the age of 26, saying he is "still haunted" by the Togo national football team attack which killed three of his colleagues in Angola ahead of the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations three months ago. (BBC) (The Guardian)
• Thierry Henry, the footballer involved in a notorious handball controversy in the France vs Republic of Ireland 2010 FIFA World Cup play-off in November 2009, is not assured of playing for his team in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, according to his manager Raymond Domenech on French television show Canal Football Club. (ESPN) (Metro) (RTÉ)
• Tiger Woods announces he will take more time off from golf after finishing fourth in the 2010 Masters Tournament. (BBC) (The Daily Telegraph)