Portal:Current events/2013 March 18
Appearance
March 18, 2013
(Monday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- Syrian civil war:
- Fighter jets from the Syrian Air Force fire rockets into northern Lebanon with no casualties reported. (CNN)
- The Syrian Opposition claims that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons in an attack on their forces in Aleppo. (US News & World Report)
- War in Somalia:
- A car bombing in the center of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, kills at least 10 people and injures 20 others. (BBC)
- Terrorism in Pakistan:
- A suspected militant suicide bombing at a court and prison complex in the Pakistani city of Peshawar kills at least 4 people and injures 47 others. (BBC) (The Guardian)
- Nigerian Sharia conflict:
Disasters and accidents
- Seven U.S. Marines are killed and seven others are injured when a mortar explodes during a training exercise in the Hawthorne Army Depot in Hawthorne, Nevada, United States. (Fox News) (CNN) (Reuters)
International relations
- Japan protests to France about the sale of DCNS helicopter landing equipment to the People's Republic of China. (AFP via Google News)
- Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner appeals to Pope Francis for assistance in settling Argentina's dispute over the Falkland Islands with the United Kingdom. (BBC)
- China says that United States plans to bolster missile defences in response to provocations by North Korea would only intensify antagonism, and urges Washington to act prudently. (The Guardian)
- North Korea threatens Japan with a preemptive nuclear strike. (NK News)
Law and crime
- M23 Movement leader Bosco Ntaganda surrenders himself at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali, having been wanted by the ICC since 2006 on war crimes charges. (AP via USA Today) (The Guardian) (The New York Times)
- Six men accused of raping a Swiss woman tourist appear in an Indian court. (Bloomberg)
- The Sun newspaper apologizes for accessing private information on a stolen mobile phone belonging to Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh. (BBC)
- James Seevakumaran, a 30-year-old student at the University of Central Florida, pulls the fire alarm and plans to attack the school. Instead, after brandishing a gun at another student, he commits suicide in his dorm in Orlando, Florida, United States. The entire campus is evacuated when improvised explosive devices are found in the room. (Los Angeles Times) (AP via Fox News)
- The United States FBI states that they know who carried out greatest art heist in American history at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. (Fox News)
Politics and elections
- Ghassan Hitto is elected as the Syrian National Coalition's provisional Prime Minister. He will be tasked with forming a government amid the Syrian civil war. (AP via USA Today) (Reuters)
- The UK's three main political parties reach an agreement on measures to regulate the British press. (BBC)
- Former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially announces her support for same-sex marriage. (AP via Boston.com)
- US President Barack Obama nominates Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez to be the next United States Secretary of Labor. (Yahoo! News)
Religion
- Pope Francis appoints Alfred Xuereb, an Honorary Prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, to succeed archbishop Georg Gänswein as his first private secretary. (Times of Malta)
Sport
- International Olympic Committee's evaluation commission begins four-day inspection of Madrid for 2020 Summer Olympics bid. (AP via ESPN)