Portal:Current events/2010 December 15

Current events of December 15, 2010 (2010-12-15) (Wednesday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Communist rebels in the Philippines kill 10 soldiers as they returned to base to observe a Christmas truce. (Straits Times)
• Dozens of people are dead following an explosion outside a mosque in the Iranian city of Chabahar. (Alertnet) (Al Jazeera) (Press TV)

Arts and culture

• The mummified remains of the head of King Henri IV of France have been discovered in the garage of a French retiree. (Time)
• Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME's 2010 Person of the Year. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange wins top place in the reader's poll. (Time) (CS Monitor)

Business and economy

• Ghana is to begin pumping its first oil since a discovery in an offshore field three years ago. (Ghana Broadcasting Corporation) (Times LIVE)

Disasters and accidents

• At least twenty-seven asylum seekers, mostly from Iraq and Iran, are feared dead after a boat carrying 70 people crashes into cliffs on the coast of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. (AAP via NineMSN), (ABC News), (AFP via Melbourne Age), (BBC)
• A bus plunges into a reservoir in the Indian state of Karnataka resulting in the death of 27 people. (BBC)
• An aircraft goes missing in Nepal with 22 people on-board. (BBC) (The Himalayan Times)
• Four children are seriously injured in a mine explosion in Battambang Province, northwestern Cambodia. (Xinhua)
• Two Air Force pilots are killed after their twin-seat trainer aircraft crashed during a training mission in Taiwan. (Straits Times) (Focus Taiwan)

International relations

• Senegal recalls its ambassador to Iran, saying that Iran had not provided an adequate explanation for an arms shipment seized in Nigeria. (BBC) (Africa News)
• Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao begins a trade visit to India. (BBC) (Times of India) (China Daily)
• The United Nations votes to lift sanctions imposed on Iraq during the Saddam Hussein era. (BBC)
• Palestinian firefighters who helped fight the Carmel fire in Israel last week are refused a permit to enter Israel for a ceremony in their honor. Officials said the firemen were denied entry as result of a "technical mishap". (Ynet)

Law and crime

• 700 people are arrested in Moscow, Russia, in attempt to prevent ethnic clashes over the shooting of a football fan. (RIA Novosti) (BBC)

Politics

• The Constitutional Court in Sudan agrees to hear a petition by lawyers for the dissolution of the body organising the referendum on Southern Sudan's indepedence. (Reuters) (Sudan Tribune)
• An alliance of opposition parties that endorse the presidency of Alassane Ouattara in the Ivory Coast call for mass protests, following the presidential election. (Africa Review) (New York Times)
• Cuba refuses to grant a visa to dissident Guillermo Fariñas so that he could receive the Sakharov Prize in France. (Al Jazeera) (BBC)
• Credit card companies such as Visa and MasterCard that prevented card-holders from donating money to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks could have their operating licenses taken away in Iceland. A parliament investigation is ongoing. (Rawstory) (Digital Journal)

Science

• Scientists discover that the black kokanee (Oncorhynchus nerka kawamurae), a Japanese salmon subspecies which scientists had thought had gone extinct in 1940, has still a living population in 2010. (Associated Press)
• Data confirms that Voyager 1 has entered the heliopause, the area of space where the Sun's solar wind is stopped by the interstellar wind. It is believed the probe will now leave the Solar System within the next four years. (AFP via Breitbart)