Portal:Current events/2007 March 20
March 20, 2007 (Tuesday)
- At least 27 people are killed in a landslide in northern Pakistan following days of heavy rain. (Reuters via the Irish Times)
- Indonesian police shoot dead a suspected member of Jemaah Islamiyah, wound three people and arrest others in an anti-terrorist raid. (AP via USA Today)
- The G33 group of developing countries meet in Indonesia to develop what they consider to be fairer trade options and restart the stalled Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations. (BBC)
- Commercial spaceflight venture SpaceX launches the second Falcon 1 rocket into space, though failing to reach orbit. (Space.com)
- Jamaican police announce investigation into the death of former Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer with suspicions that it was murder. (ABC News Australia)
- Local tribesmen and Uzbek militants clash in South Waziristan, Pakistan, leaving at least 46 people dead. (The Independent)
- Britain releases a school uniform policy allowing schools to ban the niqab or full-face veil for girls. (ABC News Australia)
- Up to 65 people die as a truck overturns on a bridge near Gueckedou, Guinea. (AP via Houston Chronicle) (BBC)
- United Kingdom Secretary of State for Defence Des Browne orders the military to destroy cluster bombs that lack self-destruct mechanisms in order to avoid harming civilians. (AP via Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
- Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy: The Bush administration agrees to allow Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers to testify but not under oath.
- France signs an extradition treaty with the People's Republic of China but will only extradite people in death penalty cases when China agrees that the person will not receive a death penalty. (BBC)
- European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana says that the EU is doing all it can to find Alan Johnston, the BBC Gaza correspondent who has been missing for 8 days. (BBC)
- At least 63 people die in a fire in a home for elderly and disabled people in a village in Russia's Krasnodar Krai. (AFP via Independent Online South Africa), (AP via CNN)
- Taha Yassin Ramadan, former Baathist Vice President of Iraq and the Ten of Diamonds in the most-wanted Iraqi playing cards, is hanged in Baghdad for his role in the Dujail killings. (BBC)
- The wife of Sami Al-Arian, a former university professor convicted by a United States district court of funneling money to Islamic Jihad, fears for his life as his hunger strike to protest his imprisonment enters its 58th day. (St. Petersburg Times)