Portal:Current events/2008 October 8
October 8, 2008 (Wednesday)
- 2008 Ukrainian political crisis:
- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko dissolves Parliament and calls an early election. (Reuters)
- Former South African Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota says that it is "inevitable" that South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) will split. (BBC News)
- The United States embassy in Beirut seeks assistance in finding two US journalists missing in Lebanon. (CNN)
- Nobel Prize:
- The 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein (GFP).(Nobel Foundation)
- Yeti Airlines Flight 103 crashes in the Everest region of Nepal killing 18 passengers. (AFP via Google News)
- Subprime mortgage crisis:
- Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling releases details of a rescue package aimed at restoring confidence in British Banks. As part of the deal the British Government will provide £50bn of investment, provide a further £200bn in short term loans and guarantee up to £250bn of intra-bank loans (BBC News)
- The United States Federal Reserve Board cuts interest rates by half a percentage point to 1.5% as part of coordinated activity with the European Central Bank and other central banks. (Los Angeles Times), (New York Times)
- Ford Motor's Volvo subsidiary tripled the number of jobs it planned to cut to 6,000 positions, or 25 percent of its work force, citing a "rapidly deteriorating" auto market.(CNN)
- 2008 Russian financial crisis:
- The RTS and MICEX stock exchanges halt trading until Friday after opening for just more than half an hour as prices plummeted in tune with the overall situation in the world's stock markets and falling oil prices. (Interfax via Onet.pl)
- Voters go to the polls in the Maldivian presidential election, the first democratic elections held in the Maldives, with six candidates including incumbent Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. (AFP)