Portal:Current events/2006 January 19

January 19, 2006 (Thursday)

Al Jazeera airs an audiotape from Osama bin Laden saying al-Qaeda is making preparations for attacks in the United States but offering a "long-term truce" to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. (MSNBC)(BBC)
Iran warns of a world oil crisis if sanctions are imposed over its nuclear program even as the United States and Europe struggle to get support for UN Security Council action. (AFP)^{[permanent dead link‍]}
President Jacques Chirac warns that France could respond with nuclear weapons against any state-sponsored terrorism attack. (ABC News) (BBC)
Two suicide bombings in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, leave at least 22 people dead and 26 wounded. (BBC)
Italy will conclude its mission in Iraq by the end of the year, in the first clear timetable for Rome to withdraw its troops, says Defense Minister Antonio Martino. (ABC)
The United States' largest independent film festival, the Sundance Film Festival, begins in Salt Lake City and Park City, Utah. 2006's entries include documentaries about prominent politicians Al Gore and Ralph Nader. (Reuters)^{[permanent dead link‍]}
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: At least 32 people are injured, including one seriously, when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonates himself at a food stand near Tel Aviv's central bus station. Palestinian Islamic Jihad's al-Quds brigades claims responsibility for the attack. It is the first terrorist attack of the year in Israel. (YNETnews)
Isabelle Dinoire, the world's first face transplant recipient, is using her new lips to take up smoking again, which doctors fear could interfere with her healing and raise the risk of tissue rejection. (CTV) Archived 2007-01-21 at the Wayback Machine
A Slovak Antonov An-24 military aircraft carrying troops back from Kosovo crashes into a mountainside in northeastern Hungary, killing 42 people. Only one person survived. (CNN)
At least thirty-one people have died during a four-day cold snap in Russia where temperatures have plunged to as low as −42 °C (−44 °F). (CBC)
A leaked memo from the United Kingdom's Foreign Office reveals that the British government had a strategy aimed at suppressing a debate about the US practice of transporting detainees to secret centres where they are at risk of being tortured. (Guardian Unlimited).
NASA Pluto probe New Horizons successfully launches at 14:00 EST. (NASA) (BBC)
In Azerbaijan, two students (Turan Aliev from Baku State University and Namik Feiziev of Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University) are readmitted and end their 22-day hunger strike, started in protest at their expulsion which they claim resulted from their political activities. (IWPR)