Portal:Current events/2010 November 17
November 17, 2010 (Wednesday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- After Alpha Condé was declared the first democratically elected president of Guinea, at least nine people have been killed during riots in Guinea’s capital, Conakry. (CNN) (Ottawa Citizen)
- Germany heightens its police security presence at its airports after identifying "concrete indications" that a terrorist attack is planned for the end of November (BBC News)
- Israel approves plans to withdraw IDF troops from the northern half of Ghajar, a village on the Israeli-Lebanese border. (BBC News)
- At least 21 people die in a fight between an armed group and African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu, Somalia. (Al Jazeera)
Arts and culture
- Thirty-six minutes of the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 is leaked. (CNN) (MTV)
- A Roman settlement filled with ancient artifacts and human remains is unearthed at a construction site in London. (BBC News)
Business and economy
- Russia to give 6 choppers, 31 tanks and 500,000 munitions to Lebanon. (Pravda)
- EU finance ministers downplay the importance of talks on a potential bailout for Ireland, claiming that no detailed discussions were held on the issue (BBC News)
- A United States bankruptcy judge orders Bank of America to return $500 million it seized from the bank accounts of the defunct Lehman Brothers trading firm a few weeks before Lehman declared bankruptcy in 2008. (Bloomberg)
- Economy of the United States
- New home construction fell to its lowest level since April 2009. (CNN Money)
- Mortgage applications declined by 14% in the week ending 12 November, the biggest drop this year. (Bloomberg)
- Core Consumer Price Index (CPI) recorded a 0.6% rise for the year, marking the slowest increase in prices since records began in 1957. (CNN Money)
- The Chicago Climate Exchange announces that it will close its cap-and-trade market, given the death of supportive legislation in the U.S. Senate. (CNN Money)
Disasters
- Floods and gale-force winds cause widespread disruption and damage across the United Kingdom county of Cornwall. (BBC)
International relations
- Italian Vice Prime Minister Janni Letta held talks with visiting Head of Iran's Cultural Heritage, Handcrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHTO) Hamid Baqaei. (IRNA)
Law and crime
- Italian police arrest fugitive Camorra crime boss Antonio Iovine. (BBC)
- Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is convicted on one count of conspiracy in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York for his role in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. (New York Times)
- Major South African health-care provider pleads guilty to using Israeli-linked organ trafficking syndicate.(Press TV)
Politics and elections
- People in the Pacific island nation of Cook Islands go to the polls for the general election as well as a referendum on reducing the number of MPs. (Xinhua) (People)
- The Republican and Democratic party caucuses in the United States House of Representatives hold leadership elections. Nancy Pelosi of the Democrats is elected as Minority Leader when the new House sits in January with John Boehner to become Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. (CNN), (MSNBC), (CNN)
- A state of emergency is declared in Guinea after post election violence. (CNN)
- Senator Lisa Murkowski wins the Alaska senate election becoming the first successful write-in candidate to be elected since 1954. (AP)
Science and technology
- Facebook inadvertently disabled some users' accounts when a system designed to detect fake accounts malfunctioned. The problem has since been resolved. (CNN Money)
- A study published by The Lancet medical journal describes how short blasts of radio waves to the kidney may help regulate blood pressure. (BBC News)
- CERN has managed to trap antihydrogen atoms for the first time. (BBC ) (Al Jazeera)