Portal:Current events/2012 August 8

August 8, 2012 (Wednesday)

Armed conflict and attacks

Armed men open fire at a checkpoint in the Egyptian city of Arish on the Sinai Peninsula. (Reuters)
- The Egyptian Air Force responds with air strikes leaving 20 people dead. (Al Jazeera)
Syrian civil war:
- Heavy fighting continues in the Salaheddine District in Aleppo. (Washington Post)
- A Jordanian government spokesman says Syria's ex-prime minister, Riad Hijab, arrives in Jordan, contradicting earlier reports that he had fled Syria on August 6. (Washington Post)

Business and economy

China announces plan to close one-third of the nation's 23 rare-earth mines and about half of 99 smelting companies. (CNN)

Disasters

2012 Pacific typhoon season:
- Typhoon Haikui makes landfall over Xiangshan County in the Chinese province of Zhejiang. (CNN)
- The death toll in the Philippines capital Manila from flooding rises to 16 with rain continuing to fall. (BBC)
- Philippine news agencies report that several cities, provinces and towns in Luzon are now under state of calamity. (The Philippine STAR) (INQUIRER.net) (ABS-CBNnews.com)
Hurricane Ernesto hits the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. (CNN)
A welding fire breaks out but is soon extinguished, with no injuries, on the 88th floor of One World Trade Center in New York City.(NBC)
A preliminary magnitude 4.5 earthquake strikes Orange County, California. Minimal damage was reported.(NBC)

Arts and culture

Anthropologists find the skeleton of a young woman inside a burial in Templo Mayor, surrounded by piles of 1,789 human bones. This finding is "unprecedented for the Aztec culture." (The Huffington Post)

Law and crime

Marvin Lee Wilson is executed by the state of Texas despite the low IQ results that could have invalidated his punishment. (CBS News)
The Supreme Court of Pakistan orders the Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf to appear before it to explain his alleged failure to comply with orders reopening corruption charges against President Asif Ali Zardari. (Reuters)
A police dog team searches a grandmother's house after the disappearance of Tia Sharp. (Sky News)
A man is sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for the kidnapping and Murder of Anni Dewani in South Africa.(Sky News)
Jared Lee Loughner, the shooter in the 2011 Tucson shooting, pleads guilty to all charges and is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. (CBS News)

Politics

30 leading German managers write a letter to the leaders of the parliamentary groups where they ask for the ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. (The Local)
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda announces that the ruling Democratic Party of Japan has reached an agreement with the opposition Liberal Democratic and New Komeito parties to pass a bill that will raise Japan's consumption tax rate. This will "shortly" be followed by dissolution of the Diet and a snap election, although no timetable has been set. (NHK World)^{[permanent dead link‍]} (Bloomberg)
President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych signs a controversial law about official status of 18 languages (including Russian, Hungarian, Crimean Tatar language, etc.) as regional and minority languages, allowing officials in Russian-speaking regions of the country to use Russian at public events and in documents. (The Washington Post)

Sport