Current events

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8 February 2006 (Wednesday)

• An explosion at Russian military base at Kurchaloi in Chechnya kills at least 12 soldiers. The cause is unknown however a separatist attack has been officially ruled out. (Al Jazeera)(Mail and Guardian)
• Japanese Princess Kiko is pregnant with her third child. (ABC)
• Thousands of native South Americans march 900 miles south of Rio de Janeiro to the spot where Sepe Tiaraju was killed in 1756, demanding that land in Brazil be given for a new "[[Guaraní]] nation."

7 February 2006 (Tuesday)

• Private Andrei Sychev, an 18-year old conscript soldier who was so severely beaten in a hazing incident at his base in Chelyabinsk on New Year's Eve that his legs and genitals had to be amputated, is transferred to Moscow for further treatment. The incident has caused uproar in Russia with President Putin addressing the State Duma on army bullying. 16 soldiers officially died in hazing incidents last year, although the figure does not include related suicides. (RIA Novosti), (ITAR-TASS)
• Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
  • An Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, has announced a competition for the best cartoon of the Holocaust "as a test of the boundaries of free speech". (BBC) (WikiNews)
  • As the Danish embassy in Tehran is attacked by hundreds of protesters, four people are killed in Afghanistan as protests against European Muhammed cartoons sweep across the country. (BBC)
  • Prime Minister of Denmark Anders Fogh Rasmussen says violent Muslim protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad are a worldwide crisis spinning out of the control of governments. (Reuters)
• Monitored by thousands of UN peacekeepers, the people of Haiti go to polling stations in the country's first election since the ousting of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. (CTV)
• An Israeli airstrike on a car kills two Palestinian militants in Gaza City. (Reuters)
• Mounir El Motassadeq, a member of the Hamburg cell led by Mohammed Atta, is ordered an early release by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. The Berlin court rules there is an absence of proof in the government's case that Motassadeq was informed about the 9/11 terrorist plot. (BBC)
• Scotland is to follow England into implementing the controversial UK National DNA Database of those arrested, but acquitted or released without charges. (Scotsman)
• Japan urges North Korea to return to six-party talks on its nuclear program and halt missile development, but a Japanese official said Pyongyang insists that Washington drop sanctions first. (Reuters)
• Georges Sada, who served as second-in-command of the Iraqi Air Force under Saddam Hussein, says Hussein moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the US-led invasion by loading them into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed. The claim is made in the newly published book Saddam's Secrets. (KurdishMedia)
• Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri is convicted on 11 of 15 charges of solicitation and incitement to murder, and incitement to racial hatred after a lengthy trial at London's Central Criminal Court and is sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. (BBC)
• The number of people attempting to view illegal child pornography on the web has risen since 2004, according to British Telecommunications (BT). They use a system to block sites carrying the images of children, which has been getting some 35,000 hits a day for the past four months. (BBC News)
• UK: Terror law watchdog questions the effectiveness of identity cards. (Telegraph)

6 February 2006 (Monday)

• In Costa Rica, the presidential election is a tight race and too close to call. (Reuters)
• Mauritania denounced amendments to an oil contract made by former authoritarian leader Maaouiya Ould Taya with Woodside Petroleum. According to BBC News, the Mauritanian authorities declared that the amendments had been signed "outside the legal framework of normal practice, to the great detriment of our country", and could cost Mauritania up to $200 million a year. {{Citenews | title=Mauritania and firm row over oil | org=BBC News | date=February 6, 2006 | url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4684836.stm}}{{Citenews | title=Crise ouverte avec la compagnie pétrolière Woodside | org=Radio France International | date=February 6, 2006 | url=http://www.rfi.fr/actufr/articles/074/article_41704.asp}}
• U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearings begin regarding the NSA warrantless surveillance program, with testimony from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. (NPR)
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warns against threatening Iran over its nuclear program. (CTV)
• As Stephen Harper is sworn in as Canada's 22nd Prime Minister, David Emerson crosses the floor from the Liberal Party to join Harper's Conservative Party, and is appointed as Minister of International Trade. Harper also appointed Michael Fortier, an unelected party supporter, to minister of public works and government services and to the senate. (CTV) (CBC)
• Western scientists working in the Foja Mountains in eastern Papua, Indonesia, discover 20 previously unknown frog species, a new species of honeyeater, four new butterflies, and at least five new plants. Also discovered were a kangaroo unknown in Papua, and a Six-wired Bird of Paradise, previously known only from dead specimens whose origin was unknown. (ABC)
• German car company BMW is banned from the Google index after attempting to deliberately deceive Google users. (Outer Court)
• In the Egyptian port of Safaga, relatives of hundreds of passengers killed when the ferry al-Salam Boccaccio '98 sank in the Red Sea, attack the office of El Salam Maritime Transport. (BBC)
• Isabelle Dinoire, the French woman who received the world's first partial face transplant appears before the media for the first time, saying she expects to resume a normal life. (CBC)

5 February 2006 (Sunday)

• American football: The Pittsburgh Steelers defeat the Seattle Seahawks by a score of 21-10 in Super Bowl XL. (Sports Illustrated)
• Iran resumes most of its nuclear program after it was voted to be referred to the United Nations Security Council. However it says that it is still open for renegotiation. (BBC)
• Jamal al-Bedawi, who masterminded the USS Cole bombing, and Fawaz al-Rabeiee, who planned the 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg, escape from a prison in Yemen along with 22 other prisoners, 12 of whom were convicted members of Al-Qaida. (Channelnewsasia) (CNN)
• The Danish embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, is set on fire by protesters because of the continued controversy over the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, and rumors of Qur'an burnings in Denmark. (BBC)

4 February 2006 (Saturday)

• Saddam Hussein aims to sue Tony Blair and George W. Bush for crimes against Iraq. (Scotsman)
• Georgia, USA. 17 human rights activists sentenced to prison including one 81 year old retired World War II Veteran for protesting outside Fort Benning military camp. (Scoop, New Zealand)
• Twenty-seven out of 35 countries on the IAEA's Board of Governors vote to refer the nuclear program of Iran to the United Nations Security Council out of concern over Iran's plans to enrich nuclear materials and to refuse IAEA inspection of the process. (BBC)
• A stampede at a sports stadium in Pasig City, Metro Manila, Philippines, kills 73 and injures more than 320, mostly women. Tens of thousands of people had gathered to watch the anniversary presentation of the popular ABS-CBN early afternoon TV gameshow, Wowowee. (BBC) (CNN)
• The Danish, and as a consequence of sharing the same building, the Chilean and Swedish embassies in Damascus, are firebombed by protestors denouncing the publication of what they consider sacrilegious cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The Norwegian embassy is also burned. (BBC)

3 February 2006 (Friday)

• The United States expels Venezuelan diplomat Jeny Figueredo Frias in retaliation for yesterday's expulsion of suspected US spy John Correa from Venezuela. A State Department spokesman described the move as part of "tit-for-tat diplomatic games". (VOA)
• The International Atomic Energy Agency has deferred until Saturday a vote on whether to report Iran to the UN Security Council over concerns its nuclear programs may produce weapons. (CBC)
• A plot to assassinate President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia by shooting down his helicopter has been foiled. (Yahoo)
• Queues build up at vendors as the EuroMillions lottery offers a jackpot of €180 million after 11 successive rollovers (statistically expected once in 25 years). Some British vendors report a 1200% increase in sales. EuroMillions tickets are sold in Austria, Belgium. France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. An Irish woman won €115,436,126 last July. (BBC), (Guardian). UPDATE: The winning numbers were 9 21 30 39 50 with Lucky Star numbers 01 and 03; the jackpot was shared between three winning tickets, two in France and one in Portugal. (UK National Lottery)
• Two car bombs explode minutes apart in southern Baghdad, killing at least 16 people and wounding more than 90 others. (CNN)
• A strong earthquake registering magnitude 5.9 shakes northeastern Japan, but there is no danger of a tsunami. (CNN)
• Arab-Israeli Conflict:
  • Hezbollah fires some 30 mortar shells at IDF outposts along the northern Israeli border, lightly wounding an Israeli soldier. In response, Israeli Air Force strikes Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. (Reuters) (YNET)
  • At least three Qassam rockets are fired from Gaza by Palestinian militants at Israeli civilian targets. One rocket strikes a home in Kibbutz Karmiyah, injuring four people, including a one-year-old infant. The home belongs to a family recently evicted during Israel's 2005 unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip. (YNET)
• The United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld likens Venezuela's President [[Hugo Chávez]] to Adolf Hitler. In retaliation, Venezuelan Vice President [[José Vicente Rangel]] refers to the US as the Third Reich. (AP), (AP)
• The M/V al-Salam Boccaccio 98, a ferry carrying 1272 passengers and 105 crew, sinks in poor weather in the Red Sea while travelling between Saudi Arabia and Egypt. 314 people have been rescued so far. (BBC) (Wikinews)
• Dutch D66 party chairman Boris Dittrich resigns because the Dutch Government voted 'Yes' to Dutch participation in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. (Expatica)

2 February 2006 (Thursday)

• A leaked memo in the UK, detailing a conversation between U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2003, has revealed that Blair intended to follow the US into Iraq even without a UN resolution, and that Bush considered provoking a response from Iraq using falsely marked Lockheed U-2 spy planes to provide an excuse for war. (Guardian)
• Venezuela has expelled U.S. Navy Cmdr. John Correa, a military attaché at the U.S. embassy in Caracas, on suspicion of espionage. (Newsweek) (BBC)
• Representative John Boehner of Ohio becomes the U.S. House Majority Leader, beating out acting majority leader Roy Blunt in a house vote. (New York Times)
• Royal Dutch Shell breaks the record for the highest ever annual profit for a British company with a total of £13.12bn (BBC news)
• The oil tanker Seabulk Pride, carrying approx 100,000 barrels (approx. 16 million L) of oil, runs aground in the port of Nikiski, Alaska. (BBC News)
• The mobile phones of high ranking Greek government officials, including Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis have been revealed to have been tapped by unknown eavesdroppers. (Reuters) (Athens News Agency)

1 February 2006 (Wednesday)

• Governor of West Virginia Joe Manchin asks for a halt in coal mining following two more coal mining deaths in the state that saw fourteen people die in coal mining disasters in January. (CNN).
• More than 200 Israeli settlers and Israeli Security Forces are injured in clashes during demolition of illegally built Amona outpost in the West Bank.(Haaretz)
• The controversy surrounding the Muhammad cartoons escalates as newspapers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain republish the controversial pictures in defiance of widespread Muslim protests in the Middle East and elsewhere.(BBC News)
• The Latin American TV station teleSUR, backed by the Venezuelan government, has signed a co-operation agreement with the Arabic channel al-Jazeera. (BBC News)
• Shares in Google fall dramatically after the company reported profits below Wall Street estimates. $12 billion in market value was lost. (AP)
• Astronomers measure the size of newly discovered solar system object {{mpl|2003 UB|313}} as larger than Pluto with 84% probability. (astro.uni-bonn.de),