Portal:Current events/2012 May 16
May 16, 2012 (Wednesday)
Armed conflict and attacks
- Cambodian police and soldiers clash with villagers after attempting to evict them from their land, where a Russian plantation project is to be headquartered. A teenage girl has reportedly been killed. (AP via The Jakarta Post)
Disasters
- The black box from a Russian passenger jet that crashed in the Indonesian province of West Java on May 9 is recovered by Indonesian authorities. (CNN)
Law and crime
- The trial of former Bosnian Serb Army Colonel General Ratko Mladić starts in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands. (CNN)
- Police in the Australian state of Queensland remove an Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Musgrave Park in the state capital Brisbane. (ABC Online)
Politics and elections
- Greek politics:
- Greece is to hold a second round of elections on June 17, after final talks by the major political parties to form a coalition government were unsuccessful. (BBC)
- Former judge Panagiotis Pikrammenos is appointed to lead a caretaker government in the meantime. (AP via Huffington Post)
- Jean-Marc Ayrault is sworn in as the Prime Minister of France. (AP via The San-Francisco Chronicle)
Art and culture
- Parachuting Rat, an artwork by Banksy, in Melbourne, estimated to be worth AU$50,000, has been accidentally destroyed by building work. (ABC News Australia)
- China Central Television Headquarters in Beijing is completed, a decade after its design by OMA. (The Guardian) (Huffington Post)