May 16, 2006 (Tuesday)
- The United States releases a list of 759 former and current inmates of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba after a Freedom of Information Act action was filed by the Associated Press. (Pentagon list) (The Age)
- War in Darfur: The United Nations Security Council votes unanimously to initiate the process which would lead to a UN peacekeeping force relieving the beleaguered African Union peacekeepers in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan. The Government of Sudan opposes the move. (BBC), (VoA)
- Chadian Information Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor accuses the Government of Sudan of facilitating a new alliance between Mahamat Nour's UFDC and the defected troops of Mahamat Nouri against the Déby administration. Neither group has confirmed or denied the merger. (CNN)
- Italian centre-left leader Romano Prodi is given the mandate to form a new government by President Giorgio Napolitano. Prodi is supposed to present his list of ministers on May 17. (BBC)
- At least 23 people have been killed in a shooting and bombing attack in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, police say. (BBC)
- Mark Inglis, a New Zealander, became the first double-amputee to climb Mount Everest [1]
- A British-Ugandan team reports a substantial reduction in glacial cover atop the Rwenzori Mountains in Central Africa, attributable to increases in air temperature over the past four decades. This "Mountains of the Moon", according to 2nd century geographer Ptolemy, is one of the sources of the Nile, and is projected in the study to disappear in two decades. (BBC)
- A tattooed mummy of a woman in her late 20s of the Moche tribe from 1,500 years ago is found near Trujillo, Peru. (BBC)