Portal:Current events/2011 May 5

Current events of May 5, 2011 (2011-05-05) (Thursday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Libyan civil war
  • Members of the multi-state coalition conducting the military campaign in Libya hold talks in Rome, Italy, and agree to set up a new fund to aid Libyan rebels, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promising to use frozen assets of Muammar Gaddafi's regime. (Washington Post) (Al Jazeera) (The Australian) (The Jerusalem Post)
  • Mortar rounds fired from Libya land near the Tunisian border town of Dehiba. (Reuters Alertnet)
• 2011 Syrian protests:
  • Dozens of tanks have been sent to the Syrian city of Homs as the Government continues to crack down on protesters. (Sky News)
  • Syrian troops arrest 300 people in a raid on the Damascus suburb of Saqba and tanks and troops are also reported to have been sent to other to quell anti-government demonstrations in Homs and Hama.(BBC) (The Telegraph)
  • About 100 tanks and troop transports converge on the town of Al-Rastan, after anti-regime protesters toppled a statue of the late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad and pledged to press ahead with their "revolution" despite sweeping arrests by Bashar al-Assad's regime. (The Australian)
  • Syrian military forces begin withdrawing from the town of Daraa after a mission to "restore security and calm," according to Syrian state TV, after more than 500 people were killed during the clashes and thousands more detained. (CNN)
• A car bomb explodes in the southern Iraqi city of Hilla, killing at least 21 police officers and injuring 65; in northern Iraq and in Baghdad, four people are killed in other attacks. (Reuters via Yahoo News) (New York Times) (CNN)
• Vietnamese soldiers clash with thousands of Hmong Christians in Dien Bien Province demanding religious freedom and autonomy in the northwest of the country, in the worst ethnic unrest in Vietnam in years. The US-based Center for Public Policy Analysis claims that at least 28 protesters were killed and hundreds more were missing, while 3,000 protesters remained at the site, according to officials. (BBC) (Straits Times) (Bangkok Post)
• A US drone attack kills two suspected al-Qaeda members in Shabwa province, Yemen. (The Telegraph)
• Claude Choules, the last known combat veteran from World War I, dies in Perth, Western Australia. (AP via MSNBC) (BBC)

Arts and culture

• American playwright and theatre director Arthur Laurents dies at the age of 93. (New York Times)

Business and economy

• Foreign investment into Latin America grows by around 40%, with China named as the fastest growing investor in the region. (BBC) (People's Daily)

Disasters

• Workers enter one of the buildings at Japan's Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant for the first time since an explosion in the days following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. (AP via MSNBC) (CNN)
• The body of Dorjee Khandu, the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh is found near the crash site of the helicopter that crashed in the Himalayan foothills on April 30. (AP via Yahoo News) (CNN)
• Rising flood waters from the Mississippi River force evacuations around Memphis, Tennessee, as near-record flooding along the river occurs from Canada and the Dakotas down to the Gulf of Mexico. (Reuters)

International relations

• The Sudanese cabinet approves a bill to add two new states to Darfur's existing three, in what rebels have condemned as plan to strengthen the central government’s control over the region. (Reuters) (AFP)
• The South Korean National Assembly ratifies a free trade agreement with the European Union. (BBC)
• The United Kingdom expels two more Libyan diplomats, a week after expelling the ambassador, in order to increase diplomatic pressure on the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. (The Independent)
• During a visit to the United Kingdom, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says that Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei is the biggest threat to world peace now that Osama bin Laden has been killed. (The Jerusalem Post)

Law and crime

• Former Egyptian interior minister Habib al-Adli is sentenced to 12 years imprisonment on corruption charges. (Al Arabiya)
• Sándor Képíró goes on trial in Hungary for alleged war crimes during World War II while serving with the Hungarian Army in Serbia in 1942. (BBC) (The Jerusalem Post)
• Dutch man Vincent Tabak pleads guilty to the manslaughter of Joanna Yeates, but denies murdering her. However, the plea is rejected by prosecutors and he is committed for trial in October. (Sky News) (BBC)
• Calisto Tanzi, the founder of Italian group Parmalat, is arrested on tax charges. (Wall Street Journal)
• Italian police seize assets worth around $1.38 billion from the Polverino mafia clan in the Naples region, and arrest 39 alleged clan members, including two who were local elections candidates from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party. (The Australian)
• A shipping vessel registered in Taiwan with a history of oil spills is fined CAD $80,000 for the illegal dumping of pollutants in Canadian waters south of Newfoundland. (The Toronto Star)

Politics and elections

• British elections
  • Voters in the United Kingdom go to the polls for a referendum on whether to use the alternative vote electoral system for the House of Commons. (The Guardian)
  • Voters in Wales go to the polls for the election for the Welsh National Assembly. (BBC)
  • Voters in Scotland go to the polls for the Scottish Parliament elections. (BBC)
  • Voters in Northern Ireland go to the polls for the Northern Ireland Assembly election. (BBC)
  • Voters throughout England go to the polls for local government elections. (BBC)
• President of the United States Barack Obama visits the World Trade Center site in New York City to commemorate the victims of the September 11 attacks following the death of Osama bin Laden. (New York Times)
• A United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rules that former Olympic champion Carl Lewis be placed on the ballot for a Democrat primary election for a New Jersey State Senate seat. (NJ.com)
• The Ivory Coast Constitutional Council confirms that Alassane Ouattara won the 2010 presidential election reversing a decision that had found in favour of the previous incumbent Laurent Gbagbo. That original decision (now reversed) had sparked a brief war. (Al Jazeera)
• The Brazilian Supreme Federal Court unanimously rules in favour of extending to same-sex couples the same rights of existing civil unions. (AP via Yahoo! News) (BBC) (AP via Washington Post)
• Republican Party candidates for the nomination in the 2012 United States presidential election hold their first debate in Greenville, South Carolina. News)

Science

• A report warns of accumulating mercury in the Arctic regions and that global emissions of mercury could increase by 25% by 2020, after another report suggested a global sea level rise by 1.6 metres by 2100, while a previous study detected chemical changes from elemental mercury to neurotoxic monomethylmercury occurring in the Arctic Ocean. (The Canadian Press) (Montreal Gazette) (Nunatsiaq Online)

Sport

• FC Porto and SC Braga, both from Portugal, qualify for the 2011 UEFA Europa League Final at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, after aggregate wins over Villarreal CF and Benfica respectively. The final is also the first ever time that two finalists have been situated less than 50 kilometers from each other. (UEFA)