Portal:Current events/2010 July 15

July 15, 2010 (Thursday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

More than 20 people are killed and 100 injured in a suicide attack at a mosque in southeastern Iran. (BBC) (Press TV) (Aljazeera) (Arab News)
40,000 people flee their homes and whole villages are burned to the ground in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (BBC)
At least six people are killed and seventeen others receive wounds after a car bomb explodes in Tikrit in Iraq. (Aljazeera)
Jwani Mwaikusa, a senior Tanzanian defence lawyer at the United Nations-backed tribunal for Rwanda, is fatally shot outside his home in Dar es Salaam. His nephew and neighbour are also killed. (BBC)
President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, speaking in Germany, says Russian investigators have identified the killer of human rights activist Natalya Estemirova and an "international search" is underway. (BBC) (France24) (iafrica)
A man claiming to be the killer of three British soldiers in Helmand contacts the BBC to say he was angered at what he described as the murder of civilians, including children, by British troops. (BBC)
Gunman Raoul Moat, who spent last week as a fugitive before being fatally cornered by UK police, repeatedly requested assistance from social workers and psychiatrists months before he committed murder but was ignored. (BBC) (ITN) (The Daily Telegraph)

Arts, culture and entertainment

Four people, including celebrity photographer François-Marie Banier, are arrested in a tax-evasion investigation into L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt. (BBC)
Robbie Williams and Take That reunite. (BBC)

International relations

Shahram Amiri:
- Shahram Amiri, the Iranian nuclear scientist who says he was abducted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, returns to Tehran. (BBC) (Aljazeera) (Sky News)
- Amiri says he was put under extreme mental and physical torture by the Americans and rejected bribe offers. (BBC) (Press TV) (Aljazeera)
- An Iranian Foreign Ministry official says Amiri is not a nuclear scientist but a university researcher. (Press TV)
10 Russian agents of influence deported from the United States face three weeks of testing to eradicate potential double agents. (The Age)
North Korean officials attend a rare meeting with members of the American-led United Nations Command. (BBC)(Samaylive)
President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez orders a review of Venezuela's ties with the Vatican following tensions between the government and Roman Catholic bishops. (BBC)

Law and crime

The Vatican issues a decree making the "attempted ordination of women" a grave crime in ecclesiastical law equivalent to child sexual abuse. (The Guardian)
A Gambian judge sentences eight men to death for their role in an alleged coup plot. (BBC) (Afrol News) (Reuters Africa)
The International Criminal Court orders the first accused at The Hague, Thomas Lubanga from the Democratic Republic of the Congo accused of allegedly recruiting child soldiers, be freed. (BBC) (CNN) (Reuters India)
An Iraqi court orders a search for a man, who disappeared yesterday, accused of involvement in the murder of aid worker Margaret Hassan in 2004. (BBC)
The Vatican issues new instructions to speed up its own cases of priestly sexual abuse that are considered "most urgent". (BBC)

Politics and elections

Science and weather

BP reports that no oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill for the first time since it began in April. (Reuters)
Hundreds of Russians die, including 233 who drowned while swimming after consuming alcohol, amidst a heat wave and drought. (BBC)
World Trade Center site workers in the United States excavate a 32 foot-long ship hull said to have been buried in the 18th century. (BBC)
Researchers discover a new species of fossil primate, Saadanius hijazensis which could be a common ancestor of Old World Monkeys and apes, including humans. (NatureNews) (BBC News) (The Guardian)

Sports