Portal:Current events/2009 July 13
July 13, 2009 (Monday)
- Twelve European companies launch the €400 billion Desertec project to build solar thermal power stations in North Africa. (Bloomberg)
- Burma announces it will release an unspecified number of political prisoners to allow them to take part in the 2010 general election. (BBC) (Bangkok Post) (Reuters)
- Henry Okah, a guerrilla leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, is released from detainment after accepting an amnesty offered by the Nigerian government. (BBC)
- Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria sign an intergovernmental agreement on the construction of the Nabucco natural gas pipeline. (BBC)
- At least 16 people have died, including eight children, in the city of Mian Channu, Pakistan, after a bomb blast in a school. (CNN) (The Times of India)
- Greek police use bulldozers to completely clear a sprawling migrant camp that had been in place in the port town of Patras for over a decade. (Sky News)
- The United Kingdom halts some arms sales to Israel following the Gaza conflict. (The Times) (Haaretz)
- Ürümqi police shoot dead two armed suspects and injure another, all being from the Uyghur ethnic group. (BBC) (AP via Google News) (Xinhua) (ChinaDaily)
- The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claims an attack on an oil depot in Lagos, Nigeria. (Forbes) (Vanguard)
- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev makes his first visit to South Ossetia. (RIA Novosti) (Bangkok Post)[permanent dead link]
- John Demjanjuk is charged with 27,900 counts of accessory to murder in World War II at a court in Germany. (Deutsche Welle) (AP)
- An explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan, kills a police chief and injures four others. The Taliban are the suspected culprits of the attack. (The New York Times)
- U.S. Senate confirmation hearings for United States Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor begin. (CNN)
- Former Prime Minister of Lebanon Amin al-Hafez dies at age 83. (AP via Google News)