Portal:Current events/2010 October 12

October 12, 2010 (Tuesday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

Two explosions occur in the southern Yemeni city of Aden, killing one person and injuring several others. The Al-Qaeda offshoot in the country also states its intention to establish a "new army" to overthrow the President. (BBC) (Al Jazeera) (Voice of Russia)
Two people are killed and ten injured after a NATO helicopter explodes just after landing in eastern Afghanistan. (AP via San Jose Mercury News)^{[permanent dead link‍]}
A Nigeria Police Force station in the northern city of Maiduguri is destroyed in an attack blamed on the Boko Haram Islamist group. (BBC)

Arts and culture

Business

Greenpeace sends Facebook a letter containing half a million signatures asking the company to cut its ties to coal based electricity.(Reuters)
2010 strikes in France: French workers initiate a 24-hour strike against pension reform with transport services badly affected. (Euronews)

Disasters

2010 Copiapó mining accident rescue:
- Chile begins attempts to rescue 33 miners trapped underground as a result of the 2010 Copiapó mining accident. (BBC) (Reuters)
- The first of the miners, Florencio Ávalos, is pulled from the mine after two months underground. (Fox News), (BBC)
41 people die following a collision between a bus and a train in the Dnipropetrovsk region in the eastern Ukraine. (BBC) (Kyiv Post) (China Daily)
18 people die in a bus accident near Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą, Poland. (BBC) (AP via Fox News)
2010 Atlantic hurricane season: Tropical Storm Paula (2010) reaches hurricane strength as it moves towards Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. (Reuters)
Tanker Mindolo and cargo ship Jork Ranger collide off Scheveningen, Netherlands. (Yahoo)
Nearly 700 people from a small town within Lagos, Nigeria, are relocated following heavy flooding. (CNN)
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono tours the disaster area resulting from the 2010 floods in West Papua Province. (RNZI)

Law and crime

Iran says two foreigners arrested for interviewing the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani had connections to "anti-revolutionary" groups abroad. (Reuters) (AFP) (Press TV)
Judge Virginia A. Phillips of the United States District Court for the Central District of California orders an injunction against the United States military continuing its don't ask don't tell policy against lesbian and gay members. (USA Today), (AP via New York Times)
The trial of Ahmed Ghailani, the first Guantanamo Bay prisoner to face a criminal trial in the United States, begins in New York City. (Reuters)

Politics and elections

Kim Jong-il's eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, announces his opposition to the hereditary succession plan in North Korea which would see power transferred to his younger brother Kim Jong-un. (AP) (RTHK) (Korea Herald)
The winners' list of the Kyrgyzstani parliamentary election is topped by the Ata-Zhurt party, led by former Emergency Situations Minister Kamchybek Tashiyev and is particularly popular in the south, gaining 8.88 percent of the vote. (Xinhua)
The Obama administration in the United States lifts a six month moratorium on deep water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico imposed following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (BBC)
Green Party Candidate, Laura Wells, is arrested upon trying to enter the 2010 Gubernatorial debate in California. All parties other than the Republicans and Democrats were barred from the debate. (Democracy Now!) (Mercury News)

Sports