Portal:Current events/2005 May 30

May 30, 2005 (Monday)

In Prague, Prince Hamid Bin Abdul Sani al-Thani of Qatar has been found guilty of sexually abusing girls younger than 15 from 2001 and 2004 and sentenced to 30 months in prison. (BBC)
Amidst scandals regarding the sale of land in Jerusalem, Patriarch Irenaios I of Jerusalem has been replaced by Metropolitan Cornelius of Petra, who serves as locum tenens of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem.BBC
Fighting in the proposed Somali capital of Baidoa threatens the stability of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia. BBC
Angela Merkel is elected by the CDU/CSU as candidate to become Chancellor of Germany in the upcoming German federal election, 2005. (Spiegel online, German)
Amnesty International has urged foreign governments to investigate high level US government officials for human rights violations committed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay.
Pope Benedict XVI says he wants to heal the rift with the Orthodox Church during his papacy. He spoke to hundreds-of-thousands of people attending a mass in the southern Italian city of Bari during his first pilgrimage away from the Vatican since he was elected less than two months ago. (VOA News)
Lebanese general election, 2005:
- Preliminary results indicate that political alliance of Saad Hariri, son of killed Rafiq Hariri, wins in Beirut parliamentary elections, despite the low turnout (Daily Star, Lebanon) (Al-Jazeera) (Reuters)^{[permanent dead link‍]}
- The son of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who was assassinated in February 2005, Saadettin Hariri declared his victory at the end of the first round of the first general elections in Lebanon after the end of 29-year Syrian military presence. (Zaman Online)
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Israel fires rockets at the Jabaliya, a Palestinian refugee camp, injuring two civilians. The IDF says it was targeting militants who were planning a rocket attack on Israel. (BBC)
Astronomers of California Institute of Technology and Astronomical Observatory of Strasbourg state that the Andromeda galaxy is three times bigger than previously estimated (Space.Com) (Universer Today) (Reuters) Archived 2013-09-02 at archive.today
Red Cross of Canada admits that it has used blood infected with HIV or hepatitis virus (Canada Newswire) (Canada.Com) (CTV) Archived 2005-12-08 at the Wayback Machine (Bloomberg)