Portal:Current events/2006 December 22

December 22, 2006 (2006-12-22) (Friday)

• About 60,000 people in Johor, Malaysia have been displaced by the 2006 Malaysian floods. (CNN), (BBC)
• Rape charges are dropped against the three Duke University lacrosse players who were accused of raping a stripper in the 2006 Duke University lacrosse team scandal. (AP)
• Andrew Wallis of The Times accuses the French government of aiding and abetting genocidaires in the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. Current Rwandan President Paul Kagame has also expressed his belief that the French and Belgian governments were complicit. (The Times)
• Space Shuttle Discovery lands safely at the Kennedy Space Center at 5:32 p.m. EST (22:32 UTC), concluding mission STS-116. They spent 13 days in space and visited the International Space Station. (NASA)
• The party of dictator Omar Bongo, the Gabonese Democratic Party, has apparently won a vast majority in the legislative election held on 17 December 2006. (BBC)
• Ethiopian war in Somalia:
  • Thousands of Somali civilians flee their homes as hundreds of troops and trucks move towards the front lines, after a night of artillery and mortar fire. (Aljazeera)
  • The Islamic Courts Union say they will send ground troops to attack on Saturday, instead of fighting from a distance with heavy weapons as they have been doing so far.(Al Jazeera)
  • The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) calls for the protection of citizens in the Somali Civil War, the latest of many ongoing diplomatic and humanitarian appeals and efforts to minimize the growing humanitarian crisis. (Common Dreams)
• The second part of the fifth round of the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program end without any agreement being reached or a date for the next round being set. (The Guardian)
• Australian archaeologist Sue O'Connor finds first evidence of modern humans in Jerimalai cave, near Lene Hara cave in East Timor.

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