Portal:Current events/2010 January 2

Current events of January 2, 2010 (2010-01-02) (Saturday)

• A quarter of voters in Iceland sign a petition asking President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson to veto a bill on repaying US$5 billion to foreign savers who lost their money when Icelandic banks collapsed. (ABC News) (Iceland Review)
• The Ugandan army announces it has killed Bok Abudema, a senior member of the Lord's Resistance Army, in the Central African Republic. (AFP) (BBC)
• The Afghan Parliament rejects 17 out of 24 cabinet nominees proposed President Hamid Karzai. (The Daily Telegraph) (Hürriyet) (Al Jazeera)
• Somali pirates seize an Indonesian chemical tanker with 24 crew in the Gulf of Aden. (Times of India) (RTT News)
• The Israeli Air Force launches an attack against tunnels leading from Gaza into Israel in response to missile attacks and mortar fire. (Haaretz) (Al Jazeera)
• 19-year-old Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen is confirmed as the youngest-ever world number one in the official January 2010 FIDE rating list. (Reuters) (TIME) (AFP) (Chessbase)
• An Antarctic expedition finds remains of the first aeroplane brought to the continent, a single-propeller Vickers plane of explorer Douglas Mawson. (Reuters)
• Atheist Ireland purposefully publishes the words of Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Salman Rushdie, Mark Twain and Pope Benedict XVI on its website despite a new law banning them on grounds of blasphemy. (BBC) (CNN) (Irish Times)
• Police in Denmark shoot a 28-year-old male Somali after he breaks into the Viby J home of Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist at the centre of a major controversy in 2005, and threatens his family with an axe. (BBC) (The Times) (Sky News)