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 despite an easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. (Al Jazeera) (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 preacefully through Rome as part of nationwide demonstrations in Italy prior to a Senate vote which threatens education funds. (BBC)

International relations

• 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:
  • 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)

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)
• Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Đukanović resigns, citing a need for new leadership, and his intentions to turn to business. (Xinhua)