Portal:Current events/2011 April 14
April 14, 2011 (Thursday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye is shot and injured during a protest against rising food and oil prices in the capital Kampala; tear gas is also fired by police to disperse protesters. (BBC) (Capital FM Kenya)
- A pro-Palestinian activist Vittorio Arrigoni is kidnapped in the Gaza Strip by an Islamic Salafite group with threats to execute him within hours. (BBC) (Israel National News), (Antara)
- Barack Obama, the President of the United States, David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France publish an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune outlining their strategy on the 2011 Libyan civil war. (New York Times)
- Shots are fired in the compound of the President of Burkina Faso Blaise Compaoré. (AFP via France24)
Arts and culture
- Encyclopedia Dramatica shuts down and is replaced by "oh internet", provoking protests by 4chan members and former readers of the site. (Geekosystem)
Business and economy
- Ford Australia announces plans to cut 240 jobs and cut production in its plants at Geelong and Broadmeadows due to falling demand for larger vehicles. (The Australian)
Disasters
- Japanese police search for the bodies of victims of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami near the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant for the first time due to declining radiation levels. (AP)
- Two people are killed, one missing and four people critically injured after a tornado hits Atoka County in the US state of Oklahoma. (KTUL), (AP via MSNBC)
International relations
- North Korea confirms that it has detained a United States citizen Jun Young Su and is preparing to charge him with "committing a crime" against the country. (BBC)
- Leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa attend a BRICS summit in Sanya in China's Hainan Province. (Xinhua)
- NATO foreign ministers meet in Berlin, Germany, to discuss issues including Libya. (AP via Yahoo! News)
Law and crime
- Réjean Hinse, a Quebec man wrongly convicted of a crime in the 1960s before being acquitted by the Supreme Court of Canada 30 years later receives a record $13.1 million in compensation. (CBC)
- Chinese police hunt for a man believed to have killed ten people in Anshan City. (Xinhua via CRI)
Politics
- Five months after his expulsion from the Shas party, Israeli rabbi Chaim Amsellem forms the Whole Nation party, and announces plans to run for the 19th Knesset on a secular-religious unity platform. (Ynetnews)
- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad forms a new government with Adel Safar confirmed as new Prime Minister, and orders the release of protesters detained over past couple of weeks.(Al Jazeera)
- British Business Secretary Vince Cable criticises Prime Minister David Cameron as "very unwise" for making a speech on immigration in which he spoke of reducing the number of immigrants into the UK from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. He said the comments "risked inflaming extremism", although Cameron dismissed these concerns. (BBC)
Sports
- India and Pakistan resume sporting relations, frozen since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. (Al Jazeera)