Portal:Current events/2013 March 27

March 27, 2013 (Wednesday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

South Thailand insurgency:
- The Thailand government prepares for peace talks with Muslim separatist groups with the hope of ending a decade-long insurgency. (The Guardian) (Al Jazeera)
Northern Mali conflict:
- The Government of Mali announces that 63 of their soldiers have been killed fighting jihadists since the French led intervention Operation Serval in January 2013. (AFP via SBS)
Terrorism in Greece:
- A bomb explodes outside the residence of a Greek shipowner near Acropolis in central Athens; no one is injured. (The Wall Street Journal)

Arts and culture

Disasters and accidents

2013 Nantou earthquake: At least one person is killed and 19 others are injured when a 6.0-magnitude earthquake strikes near Taipei, Taiwan, causing a fire and shaking buildings. (AFP via The Star Malaysia) (The Washington Post)
A mini-tornado in the Philippines kills 12 people when a motorboat capsized. (AFP via The Star Malaysia)

International relations

North Korea renews war threats against South Korea and the United States, saying conditions "for a simmering nuclear war" have been created on the Korean peninsula. The country also says it is cutting a military hotline, which facilitates the travel of South Korean workers to a joint industrial complex in Kaesong. (Al Jazeera) (BBC)
Canada becomes the first country to withdraw from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. (CTV News)

Law and crime

A German property developing firm removes parts of the East Side Gallery, a historic stretch of the Berlin Wall amid heavy police presence, despite a week of protests. (BBC)
China sentences 20 men of the ethnic Uighur group to jail terms of up to life imprisonment on charges of terrorism and inciting secession in Xinjiang. (BBC)
Oscar Pistorius's brother appears in court charged with murder over the death of motorcyclist's in a road accident in 2008. (BBC)
Wildlife officials in Cameroon find over 40 elephant carcasses, clustered in Nki and Lobeke national parks, with a horseback-riding band of about 300 poachers from Sudan being the chief suspects. (CNN)
A row between a spam-fighting group and the hosting firm CyberBunker sparks retaliatory attacks, flooding core infrastructure of the Internet, in what security experts are describing as the biggest cyberattack in history. (BBC)
Police in Wales says they will call off the search for missing April Jones in about a month. (Sky News)

Sport

In basketball, the Chicago Bulls defeated the Miami Heat 101-97, ending their winning streak at 27 games. The Heat had not lost a game since February 1st. This was also the game that featured Jimmy Butler dunking on Chris Bosh. (NBA)
In ice hockey, Jarome Iginla of the Calgary Flames is traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins, with Calgary acquiring prospects Ben Hanowski and Kenneth Agostino, and also Pittsburgh's first-round pick in the 2013 NHL Draft. Iginla has played for the Flames since the 1996 Stanley Cup playoffs, and has served as Flames captain since 2003. (NHL)