Portal:Current events/2006 May 26

May 26, 2006 (Friday)

Las Vegas Sands wins the bid to build the first casino Integrated Resort in Singapore, The Marina Bay Sands, at a cost of over S$5 billion. (CNA)
Well-known Australian mountain climber Lincoln Hall is reported to have died on Mount Everest, but is later reported to be alive, having survived a night exposed near the summit of the mountain without oxygen. (Sydney Morning Herald) (BBC)
In Berlin, Germany, Europe's largest train station, Berlin Hauptbahnhof, is opened by Chancellor Angela Merkel, Deutsche Bahn Chairman Hartmut Mehdorn and Industrial Commissioner of the European Union Günter Verheugen. The station is the hub of routes from Stockholm to Rome and Paris to Moscow. 1,200 trains will depart and arrive every day. The station is expected to have cost €800 million. (CNN) At the end of the ceremony, a stabbing rampage occurred, injuring 28 people, six of them heavily. Police say one of the first stabbing victims was HIV positive, so other victims may have been infected. (Scotsman) (BBC)
Mahmoud al-Majzoub, a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, is killed in a car-bombing along with his brother, Nidal. (AP) (NYT)
The United States Capitol building complex in Washington, D.C. is locked down after reports of what sounded like gunfire reached US Capitol police. The United States Senate was in session as a report of at least one person seeing a gunman in the Rayburn House Office Building gym was issued. Police say that the sound was likely that of a pneumatic hammer and that the 'gunman' may have been a plainclothes police officer. (CNN)
- The United States Senate was in session, when gunfire was reported, as Michael V. Hayden, who had been nominated to be director of the CIA, and Brett M. Kavanaugh, who had been nominated to be a United States court of appeals judge for the DC circuit, were both confirmed. (U.S. Senate news release)
- The United States Senate also confirmed Dirk Kempthorne as the new United States Secretary of the Interior by voice vote. The previous Secretary, Gale Norton, had resigned. Lynn Scarlett had been serving as Acting Secretary until a nominee could be confirmed. (Department of the Interior news release)