Portal:Current events/2008 September 8

September 8, 2008 (Monday)

The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola wins the 2008 legislative election. (Reuters via The New York Times)
Roger Federer defeats Andy Murray to win the U.S. Tennis Open for a record-breaking fifth consecutive time. (Fox Sports)
Washington Mutual, the largest savings and loan in the United States, ousts Chief Executive Kerry Killinger as a result of losses incurred as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis. (The New York Times)
A landslide triggered by heavy rain strikes a warehouse in Linfen in Shanxi province, China, killing at least 26 people and injuring others. (Canadian Press)
Hurricane Ike makes landfall near Banes, Cuba, and weakens. (AP via Biloxi Sun Herald)
The US military is to 'review an inquiry' into an air raid on a village in Herat province, Afghanistan, after a new video evidence emerged indicating 'scores of civilian deaths'. The US air raid in Afghanistan left up to 90 people dead, 'many of them women and children', the Afghan government and the UN said. However, US officials claimed earlier that 'no more than seven civilians died'. The bodies of 'at least 10 children and many more adults' appear in two videos made with cell phones in the Afghan village Azizabad after the raid. (BBC News) (AP)
2008 South Ossetia war:
- President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and President of France Nicolas Sarkozy announced after talks in Moscow that an agreement to pull Russian forces from Georgia within a month has been reached. The agreement has become possible as EU will send 200 civilian monitors to the area and guarantee that Georgia signs a pledge to not use military force in Abkhazia and South Ossetia again. (Reuters) (The Globe and Mail)
- 'Senior US soldiers and two military contractors' were training 80 Georgian special forces serviceman only 'month prior' these commandos entered South Ossetia on the night of August 8. Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), one of the contractors, is known also for training the Croatian military in 1995 'prior to their invasion of the ethnically-Serbian Krajina region, which led to the displacement of 200,000 refugees'. However, 'there is no evidence' that the contractors or US military knew these commandos 'were likely be used in the assault on South Ossetia'. (Financial Times)
Three British Muslim men are found guilty of conspiracy to murder relating to the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot. (The Times)