Portal:Current events/2013 May 3

Current events of May 3, 2013 (2013-05-03) (Friday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Syrian civil war:
  • Israeli warplanes bomb a Syrian weapons facility in an overnight attack. (New York Times)

Arts and culture

• The world's largest rubber duck is moved to Hong Kong. (ABC News)
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art announces that it will return two Koh Ker statues to Cambodia. (ABC News)

Business and economics

• The Stockholm School of Economics, one of Sweden's most prestigious universities, is hit by scandal amidst revelation that top official Justin Jenk forged CMC documents about his conviction of insider trading in Greece. (Dagens Industri) (Swedish)
• Heavy construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar announces it plans to lay off an additional 300 employees by July. (Chicago Tribune)

Disasters and accidents

• 2013 Savar building collapse:
  • The death toll from the Savar building collapse in Bangladesh rises to 547. (The Associated Press)
  • Bangladesh's finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, downplays the impact of last week's factory-building collapse on his country's garment industry. (AP via News24)
  • A top investigator probing the disaster says that vibrations from four huge generators placed on the roof of the building caused it to collapse. (AFP via News24), (BBC)
• A U.S. KC-135 tanker aircraft on its way to Afghanistan crashes in northern Kyrgyzstan after a mid-flight explosion. (The Globe and Mail), (BBC)
• Wildfires continue to spread in the U.S. state of California. (LA Times)

Law and crime

• Brian Shivers is acquitted of any involvement in the 2009 Massereene Barracks shooting. Mr. Shivers, who has cystic fibrosis, has his life sentence overturned, having been jailed since January 2012 in what his solicitor describes as a miscarriage of justice. (BBC) (RTÉ)
• Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, a prosecutor with Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency leading the prosecution of former President Pervez Musharraf over alleged involvement in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, is shot dead on the way to court in Islamabad. (The Guardian)
• Daryl Washington, an American football player with the Arizona Cardinals, is arrested on aggravated assault charges in Phoenix, Arizona. (AP)
• Chinese police arrest more than 900 people as they shutdown a million dollar crime ring that was selling rat meat as mutton. (Reuters)

Politics and elections

• United Kingdom local elections, 2013:
  • Results of the elections show gains for Labour and UKIP and losses for the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party.BBC
  • The UK Independence Party wins 140 seats, achieving 25% of the votes in areas where it fielded candidates, the party's most significant results to date. (BBC)
  • Labour's Emma Lewell-Buck retains the South Shields Parliamentary seat for the party following Thursday's by-election, but with a reduced majority after the UK Independence Party secures almost a quarter of the votes cast. (BBC)
• Google recognizes Palestine as a country instead of redirecting to the Palestinian territories. (FOX) (BBC)

Science and technology

• Scientists announce the discovery of a new meat-eating Theropod dinosaur, Aorun zhaoi, dating from 161 million years ago. It is the oldest Coelurosaur known to date. (Design & Trend)