Portal:Current events/2010 December 22

Current events of December 22, 2010 (2010-12-22) (Wednesday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

• South Korea announces it is to hold its biggest ever live fire drill near the North Korea border. (Al Jazeera) (BBC)
• A senior Israeli army officer tells the BBC that another Gaza War is "a question of when, not if" should Hamas continue to control the Gaza Strip. (BBC)

Arts and culture

• Pope Benedict XVI announces a BBC Radio 4 Christmas Eve message, the first such message for one of the countries he visited last year. (BBC)

Business and economics

• Thousands of students march peacefully through Rome as part of nationwide demonstrations in Italy prior to a Senate vote which threatens education funds. (Al Jazeera) (BBC)
• The World Bank stops financing Côte d'Ivoire. (Al Jazeera)

Disasters

• A UN Development Programme report concludes that Aceh's recovery from the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami is "beyond anything imaginable six years ago" but that more needs to be done concerning poverty and natural disaster impact. (BBC)
• The United States approves more than $4 billion assistance for rescuers and residents whose health was affected after the September 11 attacks in New York City in 2001. (Al Jazeera)
• Ongoing flooding in California kills at least three people. (Hereald Sun) (New York Daily News) (MSNBC)

International relations

• The United States House of Representatives decides not to take up a resolution declaring the mass killings of Armenians early last century a genocide, helping the administration to avoid a diplomatic clash with Turkey. (The Washington Post)
• The United States Senate votes to ratify the New START Treaty with the Russia, which halves the number of deployed strategic nuclear missile launchers maintained by each nation. (The Washington Post)
• The United Nations votes in favour of restoring a reference to sexual orientation in a resolution banning the unjustified killing of minority groups. (BBC)
• United States diplomatic cables leak: (The Guardian: Day 24 Summary)
  • New cables show that the British government was involved in the training of the Bangladeshi Rapid Action Battalion, a paramilitary force widely criticised for human rights violations, including torture and over 1,000 extra-judicial killings since its 2004 inception. (MSNBC) (The Guardian) (Bangladesh News 24 hours)
  • Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State, is documented ordering all U.S. ambassadors to pressure their respective nations' media into not being critical of the U.S. aid program in Haiti, days after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. (The Guardian)
  • Documents are released outlining pressure the U.S. used in an attempt to stop Italy from indicting the CIA agents who kidnapped Abu Omar in Milan, then flew him to Egypt to be tortured. The documents show Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi to be on the American side and recorded him "vent[ing] his rage at his own country's judicial system." (Der Spiegel)
  • McDonalds attempted to pressure the U.S. government to stall the implementation of the Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement until El Salvador appointed "neutral judges" in a $24million lawsuit against the company in 2006. (The Guardian)
  • U.S. diplomats applied pressure on Bangladesh to allow the London-based Global Coal Management company to reopen a large open-cast coal mine in the Phulbari area that was closed due to violent protests over foreign ownership of Bangladeshi resources succeeded in closing the mine. (The Guardian)
  • Newly released cables reveal that New Zealand threatened Fiji's military chief Frank Bainimarama and his wife. (Stuff)
• The Russian government is "forced to take an adequate corresponding measure" following Britain's expulsion of one of its diplomats. (Al Jazeera)

Law and crime

• Three Tibetan Buddhist monks are unaccounted for after being sentenced to long prison terms by Chinese authorities earlier this year for participating in a peaceful protest march by Drepung monastery monks in 2008. (RFA)
• WikiLeaks:
  • The United Nations office for torture issues in Geneva investigates an abuse complaint concerning United States Army private Bradley Manning, suspected by the United States government of passing classified documents to the WikiLeaks website. (The Hindu) (The Guardian) (AP via Google News) (The Irish Times)
  • Julian Assange discusses the time he spent locked up in Wandsworth Prison in an interview with the El País newspaper. (El País)
  • The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launches WikiLeaks Task Force or WTF, a taskforce intended to examine the impact caused by the released cables. (The Guardian)
  • Mauritius sues the United Kingdom due to prevention of the return of 2,000 residents forced out of the Chagos Islands during a 1960s lease to a U.S. air base. (BBC)
• The European Commission rejects efforts by several ex-Soviet bloc countries for the European Union to legislate against the condoning or denial of totalitarian crimes. (BBC)
• 7 out of 9 presidential candidates, charged with organizing mass disturbances, may receive 15-year sentences in Belarus, according to human rights groups. (Al Jazeera)
• The chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority's civil liberties panel describes as "appalling" and "ghastly" a kettling video and encourages students subjected to this procedure to make official complaints against the British police. (The Guardian)
• Jorge Rafael Videla, the former de facto President of Argentina, is sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of crimes against humanity. (BBC) (Al Jazeera)
• President of the United States Barack Obama signs into law the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, which will bring an end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy of discriminating against the presence of openly gay people in the country's military. More than 13,000 people were sacked by the United States under this policy. (BBC)

Politics and elections

• The fears of British Liberal Democrat government ministers over policies relating to welfare and tuition fees are secretly recorded by The Daily Telegraph newspaper. (BBC)
• British millionaire Tory MP Zac Goldsmith is not to be reported to police over his election spending allegations but some other concerns are expressed by the Electoral Commission. (BBC)
• Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Đukanović resigns, citing a need for new leadership, and his intentions to turn to business. (Xinhua)

Science

• Two eight-year-olds publish a significant peer-reviewed study in the Biology Letters journal of the Royal Society, examining the spatial memory of bumblebees. (Agence Presse-France) (The Hindu) (Los Angeles Times)