Portal:Current events/2007 January 18

January 18, 2007 (Thursday)

110th United States Congress: The United States Senate passes ethics and lobbying reform legislation. (Fox News)
Alleged racist treatment of Indian actress Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity Big Brother 2007 draws widespread attention. It has attracted a record 33,000 complaints, death threats and has resulted in cancellation of multi-million pound Big Brother sponsorships and participants' modelling contracts. Prime Minister Tony Blair's likely successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown commented on the subject during his India visit and has been mentioned in the House of Commons. (BBC News)
The United States government reports that the People's Republic of China successfully tested a missile that destroyed an orbiting satellite of the Dong Fang Hong program. (CNN)
The longest reigning minister-president in 200 years in Bavaria, Edmund Stoiber, quits his position as minister-president and chairman of the CSU. Stoiber held the first position from 1993 and the second position from 1999. (BBC News)
Al Arabiya reports that a fire at Kuwait's Shuaiba Port has stopped oil exports and refining in that country. (Dow Jones via NASDAQ)
The French newspaper Le Monde reports that Spanish cyclist Óscar Pereiro has produced two positive urine samples for salbutamol during the 2006 Tour de France. Pereiro had finished second in the Tour. The contested winner, Floyd Landis, had tested positive for testosterone during the Tour. (Le Monde)
Two people are killed in the Jumeirah Lake Towers fire in Dubai. (BBC)
The European windstorm Kyrill sweeps across Great Britain, the Netherlands and Germany, killing at least nine in Britain and three in the Netherlands. The container ship MSC Napoli has to be abandoned in the English Channel because of the wind. British and French rescue services pick up 26 crew members. (BBC News)
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki suggests that if the United States better armed the Iraqi armed forces, they would be able to dramatically draw back U.S. troops "in three to six months". (BBC)
Israel transfers to the Palestinian Authority $100 million tax revenues withheld since the Hamas won the election last year. (BBC)
Speaker of the Liberian Parliament Edwin Snowe is sacked following a vote of no confidence. (BBC)
Western U.S. Freeze of 2007:
- 65 deaths have been attributed to blizzards, ice storms and freezing rain since Friday (January 12) in nine U.S. states, including 23 in Oklahoma and 10 in Texas. (CNN)
- Interstate 10 in Texas and Interstate 5 north of Los Angeles, California, remain closed due to snow and ice. (CNN)
- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger asks for his state to be declared a federal disaster area after agricultural damage is estimated over $1 billion USD. (CNN)
- Snow is recorded at Los Angeles International Airport for the first time since 1962. (KNBC)